UN Women Organized Gender Responsive Media Workshop Evaluation and Experience Sharing Meeting

UN Women organized a Gender Responsive Media Workshop Evaluation and Experience Sharing Meeting with Milliyet Newspaper. Held on July 29th in Istanbul, the meeting was attended by editors, editors-in-chief, reporters, visual directors, and editor-in-chiefs of Milliyet Newspaper. Within the scope of the workshop, the participants shared their experiences in addressing news content from a gender equality perspective, one of the topics covered in the Gender Responsive Media Workshop they attended on October 15, 2022. Participants mentioned that their advocacy activities in the visual and textual content they prepared were much more strengthened after the training they received.

The workshop, instructed by Prof. Dr. Nezih Orhon, included findings on how the way media professionals handle each content in the media can affect the wide audience that the news reaches. A total of 15 participants were trained in the workshop organized within the scope of “Advancing Gender Equality and Women's Leadership in Political and Business Life Project" funded by Sweden through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and implemented by UN Women Türkiye.

UN Women Türkiye Program Specialist Duygu Arığ said: "Transforming discriminatory and sexist language is a necessity for equality. The media has a huge role in this transformation. As an agent of change, we are working with Milliyet Newspaper to transform unequal news language. We will continue our cooperation to ensure gender equality and implement gender-responsive corporate practices in the media."

Pınar Aktaş, Head of News at Milliyet Newspaper said: "Media is one of the most powerful tools for achieving gender equality. As the editorial staff of Milliyet newspaper, we have already participated in The Gender Responsive Media Workshop, which is a part of our three-year collaboration with UN Women Türkiye. At today's evaluation meeting, we had the opportunity to update ourselves on using a transformative and equal language as a newspaper. It is very important for us to reinforce the understanding of gender equality in all departments, to combat sexist language and to evaluate and monitor these efforts."

Sanem Arman, Editor-in-Chief of Milliyet Pazar said: "The current data on the visibility of women and men in social life, politics, academia and the media, presented as part of the Gender Responsive Media Training, enabled us to see the areas of inequality more strikingly. We were introduced to the newspaper coding system, which consists of many headings such as the language of the news, the center of the story, and the contribution of visuals to the news. We discussed the transformative effect of gender-responsive news language on the coverage of violence against women in the media with examples. We will continue to observe the contribution of eye-tracking analysis and data visualization in the content we will prepare in the future."

UN Women Türkiye has developed an online gender-responsive media guide for media professionals to implement gender-responsive practices and to serve as a guide for other media organizations to follow. “The Gender Responsive News Content Checklist" included in the media guide was shared with the participants during the workshop. With this list, media professionals are expected to review their news content from a gender equality perspective before publishing it.