Friday, February 20, 2015

Making Change. Nordic Examples of Working Towards Gender Equality in the Media

 
How can the media industry promote gender equality? What difference can activists make? How can research contribute to developing and sharing knowledge? These issues were in focus of the project Nordic Gender & Media Forum. 
@nordicom. Image cover by Carina Kågström

I was the proud project leader of the Forum and the co-editor of the Nordicom anthology Making change. Nordic Examples of Working Towards Gender Equality in the Media. The project can be seen as a Nordic follow up on Section J  in the Beijing Platform for Action.
In the anthology Making change (available online, open access) researchers, activists and industry representatives share good practices from the Nordic countries. The anthology also contains gender based statistics about film, journalism, computer games and advertising compiled by Nordicom.
When collecting the Nordic media statistics it became clear that comparative studies like the ones from IMWF, EIGE and GMMP are crucial for creating knowledge that can make gender equality in the media to move forward.
Nordicom launched the book in Vilnius in December 2014, in cooperation with the Nordic Council of Minister 's Information Office in Lithuania and EIGE.
It was also launched in New York in 2015 connection with the CSW59.  (The project was financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.)