Monitoring gender equality in Maghreb media
PARIS, France, November 28, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ — A workshop on media monitoring methods and advocacy of gender equality in media content will start tomorrow in Tunis, Tunisia. The three-day training is organized by UNESCO’s Office in Rabat, in partnership with ISESCO and GIZ-Morocco (German Cooperation Agency), for civil society groups from the Maghreb countries.
The workshop will be held within the framework of UNESCO’s 2010-2013 Programme to promote gender sensitive media content in the Maghreb countries. The major objective of this programme is to raise awareness of media professionals, decision makers, managers of training institutions and civil society groups about the representation of women in Maghreb media, and to advance gender equality in the Maghreb countries.
As the civil society’s involvement is crucial for promoting gender sensitive media content, UNESCO is mobilizing these groups to carry out their own media monitoring and advocacy actions, and to create a sub-regional monitoring network to advance gender equality in the Maghreb productions.
The guidelines, Women and media in the Maghreb, produced by the UNESCO Rabat Office, will be used as a didactic tool at the workshop. These guidelines were conceived as a toolkit to help Maghreb civil society groups to monitor gender perspective in media, communicate and advocate against stereotyped and discriminatory media content. They provide good examples of the representation of women in the Maghreb media, instructions on how to identify discriminatory content, and techniques to succeed in advocacy efforts.
UNESCO places a very high priority on gender equality as outlined in its strategy, which is pursued through a two-fold approach: gender-specific programming; and gender mainstreaming with actions in all of UNESCO’s fields of competence: education, the sciences, culture, and communication and information. This strategy applies to all levels of interventions – from policy development, awareness raising, advocacy and research, to institutional capacity building and training.
SOURCE
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
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