IFJ Project - Rewriting the story. Gender, Media & Politics

Old challenge, new project!

The AGEMI website hosts all the materials and training modules produced within the framework of the IFJ-led consortium that launched Re-writing the story: Gender, media and politics, a EU-funded project aimed at addressing barriers to the fair representation and portrayal of women and men in politics and public life (EU DG JUstice - Citizenship, Equality, Rights and Values Programme CERV). 
Working with frontline journalists, journalists’ unions and associations, news media managers and organisations, gender experts, media self-regulatory bodies, women active in political life, academics and, crucially, the next generation of media professionals, the project seeks to initiate reforms in European media with regard to newsroom culture, policies and processes. The goal of the project is to improve media practices with regard to the fair portrayal of women and men in politics and public life and to empower citizens to make informed decisions, especially with regard to the elections of the European Parliament in 2024. 
The project seeks to deliver a two year programme aimed at developing journalists', media students' and public broadcasters' skills on reporting politics with a gender lens, enhance gender-equal newsroom cultures and foster the adoption of gender-transformative media policies. To achieve its objectives the project Re-writing the story: Gender, media and politics will:

  • build bridges between news media unions, media organisations, media, communication and journalism students, and media professionals and civic organisations;
  • research the challenges and obstacles to women and men’s equal participation and portrayal in political and public life in the media, and map existing best practices across private and public media organisations and platforms;
  • develop specialized training modules for journalists and media unions and make them openly accessible on the AGEMI platform in a dedicated section; you can download the Toolkit "Rewriting the Story: Tackling Media Gender Stereotypes in Political and Public Life" here;
  • provide training for 28 IFJ journalists’ trainers to help build national capacity and amplify professionals’ ability to secure change in twelve European countries (Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain). Dates: June 2023;
  • provide tailored training courses for students in media, journalism and communication on gender portrayal in politics and gendered communicative practices through teaching partnership involving universities from across Europe;
  • run an innovative Peer-to-Peer programme, work with newsroom managers, producers, journalists and journalists’ unions to produce and adopt protocols, guidelines, agreements and initiate a mindset shift towards gender equality in editorial decisions and newsroom organisation and working conditions. As a result of the peer-to-peer and training programs, IFJ has released a set of guidelines for covering women politicians that you can download here; versions in Spanish and French are also available here:
  • organise a Final Conference bringing together broadcasters, unions of journalists, trainers, professors, researchers and students, to be held at Venice International University (San Servolo). Dates: 13-16 October 2024.


Training
for journalists

Training module for the fair representation of men and women in politics and public life

Go to training

Training
for students

Coordinated academic activities with students and teachers in media and communication

Go the activities

Peer-to-peer
programme

From COPEAM along with newsroom managers, producers, journalists and journalists’ unions

See the programme

Project
outcomes

Collected and organised data, as well as relevant research conducted by the students who took part in the project

Have a look

Who we are



International Federation of Journalists (Brussels), with the specific involvement of the Croatia journalists' union and the Union of Cyprus journalists


University of Padova (Italy), Elena Cornaro University Center for gender studies


COPEAM (Italy headquarter), with the involvement of public broadcasters from six European countries


Last modified: Wednesday, 8 May 2024, 4:01 PM