Seven women on challenging male dominance in the media
How can media be used as an active tool in the development of women’s rights and gender equality? In the spring of 2015, International Media Support (IMS) invited seven women media professionals to visit Denmark for a series of public debates and knowledge sharing events
Hala Bejjani, the Lebanese founder of a children’s newspaper in Beirut and the Planet News Business in Qatar, criticised the Western way of portraying the Arab world.
“I do not like the way we are often portrayed in the media, with religion being decisive. We have just as many ‘crazy Muhammad’s’ as Christians have ‘crazy Pauls’,” she said.
“The whole idea of this trip is to show them that the extremists don’t represent us.”
The group included a cartoonist, three editors-in-chief, a film festival director, a political journalist and a radio host. The road trip Challenging male dominance in the media was organised by IMS, with support from the Danish-Arab Partnership Programme.
Going from Aarhus to Copenhagen, the seven participants met with Danish media professionals, politicians and local people in the different cities that they visited. Together they created debates and challenged excising perceptions of women in the media.
“You can choose to portray a woman as a victim, or you can choose to focus on the fact that she once was a victim, but was able to overcome it. Then she becomes a heroine. Most media portray Arab women as victims. We want to portray them as heroes,” said Nadine Nimri at a public debate at the Danish Women’s Museum.
Nadine Nimri was one of the seven Arab media professionals who visited Denmark as part of this road trip aiming at establishing meetings between media professionals engaged in gender issues in the Arab world and Denmark.
Read more about the seven participants
‘Challenging male dominance in the media’ is part of IMS’ Twinning programme. Twinning is a platform for collaboration between Arab, Iranian and Danish media professionals. The programme is a means to foster exchange between professionals on various levels between journalists, editors, photographers and media managers.
