Women's Views on News |
| Courage in journalism recognised Posted: 08 May 2013 08:03 AM PDT
For the past 22 years, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) has paid tribute to women journalists who risk their lives to report the news with its Courage in Journalism Awards. The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a woman journalist who has a pioneering spirit and whose determination has paved the way for women in the news media. This year, the Awards honour Najiba Ayubi, Nour Kelze, Bopha Phorn and Edna Machirori. Najiba Ayubi, 45, is managing director for The Killid Group in Afghanistan. Ayubi also co-founded the Afghan Independent Media Consortium and the Freedom of Expression Initiative, both with the intention of providing resources and support for independent journalists in her country. Ayubi has spent more than a decade working under anonymous threats and attacks from government entities for her reporting on politics and women's rights. She leads a team of reporters working in print, broadcast and online media and has refused calls for censorship. For more than two decades, Ayubi has been a leading independent voice in Afghan media, and she has regularly received threatening phone calls and letters since 2004. Threats tied to her critical reporting and her refusal, as director of a news organization, to censor the stories that are published and broadcast on her watch. Politicians have sent gunmen to her home, anonymous aggressors have vowed to harm her family, and she has been publicly defamed, but in each case, she has faced her attackers and has rejected calls to limit her work. Nour Kelze is a 25 year-old photojournalist for Reuters in Syria. Kelze occupies the front lines of the conflict in her country, working to document the human cost of the Syrian revolution; she has been shot at countless times, hospitalized twice for wounds sustained while photographing, and targeted in pro-Assad propaganda. She has been working as a photojournalist and stringer since 2012 – when she was discovered taking pictures of revolutionary fighters on her cell phone by a well-known war photographer. She was a school teacher prior to the war, but is now doing a job that few Syrian journalists – and even fewer women – have been willing to do. Kelze has been on the front lines of the Syrian revolution, recording the human cost of Syria's fight for democracy, has been targeted in pro-regime propaganda and has received threats via social media. In February 2013, Kelze's ankle was broken when a wall fell on her as she retreated from sniper fire. Four days after surgery to repair the break, she was back to work in a cast. She now plans to set up a media center in Aleppo. Her vision is to provide training and support for Syrian and international journalists, with a focus on women. Bopha Phorn, 28, is a reporter for The Cambodia Daily in Cambodia. Her reporting on environmental exploitation nearly got her killed in April 2012, when her car came under heavy fire during a reporting trip in the Cambodian jungle. She was investigating claims of illegal logging in a protected area of the Cambodian jungle with another journalist and an environmental activist when gunmen with AK-47s sprayed the car with shots. The activist, Chut Wutty, was killed. Phorn's reporting on land and environmental issues, as well as her stories about criminal activity and human rights abuses, have made her the target of other life-threatening attacks. But in spite of the danger she is committed to journalism and has taken up some of the most controversial stories of the day. This year’s IWMF Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Edna Machirori, the first black female newspaper editor in Zimbabwe. As a woman journalist in post-colonial Zimbabwe, Machirori rose through the ranks of several newspapers, including The Chronicle and The Financial Gazette, in spite of a deeply patriarchal culture. Machirori writes about development, corruption and social issues, has acted as a mentor to other women throughout her career and has faced down critics of her incisive reporting. She started in journalism in 1963 as a cadet reporter for the African Daily News, a nationalist newspaper based in Harare – known as Salisbury under colonial rule – after sending the paper "letters to the editor" while she was in high school. During her early years with the African Daily News, Machirori was the only woman on the staff at any level. Later, she occupied editing positions at The Chronicle and The Financial Gazette. In 1988, she was leading the news team as news editor when The Chronicle published "The Willowgate Scandal", an investigation into corruption among high-level members of ruling party ZANU-PF. Today, Machirori freelances for several publications in her country. She has been publicly criticized by ZANU-PF officials for her writing on politics, but she continues, working to challenge the official line on important issues. BBC News’ Kate Adie is among the 22 journalists who have so far been honoured with the IWMF Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous Award winners include Zubeida Mustafa, columnist, Pakistan; Barbara Walters, ABC News, United States; and Magdalena Ruiz, Radio Mitre, Argentina. Seventy-eight journalists have been honoured with Courage in Journalism Awards. Previous award winners include Khadija Ismayilova, RFE/RL, Azerbaijan; Adela Navarro Bello, Zeta, Mexico; Tsering Woeser, blogger and writer, Tibet; Jill Carroll, The Christian Science Monitor, United States; May Chidiac, Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, Lebanon; and Anna Politkovskaya, of Novaya Gazeta, Russia, who was shot dead in 2006.  |
| Posted: 08 May 2013 04:37 AM PDT
It is often difficult finding any reference to women in history, let alone understanding what they did and how they contributed to society. Until quite recently women routinely changed their names after marrying, they were not allowed to vote and own property, men paid the bills and wrote the wills, so finding them is not so easy. Sharon DeBartolo Cormack, author of Finding Female Ancestors, believes following the female line can open up new possibilities. Women are important to trace because they are the ones who give us new family lines to pursue, and researching your female line can help explode myths and challenge stereotypes. "When you trace your female line you realise how many women worked,” she said. "If you have a more middle class line you may find women who engaged in political campaigning. Working class women were working all the time, right through pregnancy in some cases. Cormack believes getting to know your female ancestors can help develop a more rounded picture of life in the past. "While we may find many records for men detailing their military service, land purchases and civic lives, women were more likely to be the letter writers, the family Bible recorders, and the diarists. "They recorded family and daily life," she said. A good example of this, for Cormack, came from one of her clients. "She’s fortunate to have her mother’s high school diaries from the 1930s. "Here you have the mom’s own writing, her own voice, her own thoughts, her own opinions, as well as the names of all the boys she dated and had crushes on. "No other record will give you that kind of information," said Cormack. But for genealogist Emma Jolly, author of titles like Family History for Kids and an upcoming book about women in war, tracing her female line helps her understand her own experiences. "I'm a mother, so I'm interested in the pregnancy, child rearing and childbirth experiences of my ancestors. “It's something you can learn from, as pregnancy is something that all women experience whatever era you're in. "I grew up with my grandmother, she used to live with us and our pregnancy experiences have been the same. We all had the same morning sickness and childbirth experiences," she said. "My great, great grandmother was working as a domestic servant right through pregnancy in a London townhouse, so she would have had to go up several flights of stairs,” said Jolly. “How hard must that have been?" You often have to dig deep to find out what your female ancestors were doing, Jolly said. “Newspapers are really good. There's the Times, Guardian, Observer and Daily Mirror archives. "Women were often involved in church and community activities, so you may have to look at more specific archives, so if it is a Methodist church it might be with the National Methodist Archives. "There may be a really detailed obituary or an analysis of your ancestor running a church fete. "You can also check marriage certificates and birth certificates for maiden names," she said. Vital – and fun.  |
| Fat shaming is a feminist issue Posted: 08 May 2013 01:04 AM PDT
'Fat shaming', although hard to succinctly define, is exactly what it sounds like. It is behaviour borne from the cultural assumption that being overweight is shameful and that it is therefore acceptable to mock, harass or belittle people because of their size. Two bloggers, Karina and Bethany, spoke to BBC Radio Four’s Woman's Hour presenter Jane Garvey recently about public reactions to their bodies, and how this affects their lives. Karina described the extent to which her life is restricted by the treatment she receives in public. She explained how she rarely leaves the house because of cruel comments about her weight; people regularly shout abuse from cars or barge her in the street. She also described a recent event in which a teenage girl walked up to her on the underground and went 'oink' in her face. For any decent human being, it is hard to conceive of a world where this is allowed to happen. But of course it does happen, in one form or another, everywhere. From celebrity magazines to the Daily Mail’s 'sidebar of shame', women's bodies are scrutinised and mocked and journalistic vitriol is poured on any woman who deviates from a culturally constructed 'acceptable' size, even if they are pregnant. For women like Karina, this is nowhere more apparent than on the street. One of the most common misconceptions of street harassment is that it only happens to those who fit the paradigm of conventional female attractiveness. The stereotypical image of the slim young woman passing a site full of leering builders has become entrenched in the psyche. It may be difficult, then, for people to realise that the harassment women face in public is often about male entitlement, not 'sexiness'. It is also about a culture within which the policing of women's bodies, and of their movement through public space, is normalised. Some women have described fat shaming by men who, they believe, feel anger towards them for not fitting the sociocultural norm of the female body. Women fat shame other women because our culture has made the female body public property. Fat shaming is not entirely gender specific but both Karina and Bethany agreed that men are not subject to the same level of treatment in public. Indeed, one recent study concluded that 'women tend to bear the brunt of anti-fat prejudice'. Women have been given space to share their experiences of harassment through the Everyday Sexism and Coventry Harassment Projects. It would be interesting to know how many women do not view comments on their size through the spectrum of street harassment or gender discrimination because the comments do not – ostensibly – appear sexualised. American photographer Haley Morris-Cafiero, a university professor and photographer, has recently completed a fascinating project entitled 'Pictures of People who Mock Me'. The photographs capture members of the public – unaware they have been caught on camera – reacting negatively to her body. She described the project as '[taking] my power back'. Susie Orbach wrote Fat is A Feminist Issue in 1978. Last year she wrote that 'fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim'. Some people are working to change this. Bethany, for example, now runs the brilliant 'fatshion' blog archedeyebrow and describes herself as having '[reached] my full potential as a happy, confident fat person'.  |
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