Mediterranean Woman Journalists: 9 Countries, 7 Languages, 45 Articles

Women journalists met in Barcelona on 5 and 6 February to prepare for a project of 45 articles which will deal with the lives of Mediterranean women in their 20s.

The project has been organised by bianet in Istanbul, babelmed.net in Rome, the weekly Afkar/Ideas magazine in Barcelona and the L’Orient Le Jour newspaper from Beirut, and has been sponsored by the Anna Lindht Foundation, IEMed (Mediterranean- European Institute) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Women are stereotyped and underrepresented 

Bianet also participated in the meeting which discussed the (in)visibility and representation of women in the media. The articles will be published first in bianet, babelmed, Afkar/Ideas and L’Orient Le Jour.

How active and effective are women in the media? How are women represented in the media, and why are they usually pushed into certain roles?

These were often-repeated questions. Although there has been an increase in the number of female journalists in the “Mediterranean media,” women are not really represented in the “serious world.”

The project of representing Mediterranean women in their 20s in a series of articles is thus also a way of counteracting the stereotyping of women in the mainstream media.

Different topics and different languages 

The meeting in Barcelona was preceded by a six-month period of preparation, discussion and exchange. Every journalist will write in her own language, but every article will be translated into Arabic, Italian, English, Spanish, Catalan, French and Turkish.

After two days of discussing the problems which women/journalists face in their own societies, the following topics were decided on:

“The realities of women, inter-generational relations, covering/conservatism and religion, domestic violence, migration, love, role models, creativity, living with conflict.”

The first articles will be prepared under the topic “love” for 8 March Women’s Day.

At the end of the project in April, the contributing journalists will meet again in Rome. There may be a book project and further collaborations.

Participants in the project

Sahar Al-Attar (Lebanon – L’Orient Le Jour), Stefanella Campana (Italy – Paraleli), Catherine Cornet (Italy – Babelmed), Nathalie Galense (Italy, France – Babelmed), Ghania Khelifi (Algeria – Le midi), Nadia Khoury-Dagher (France – Le Monde 2/Elle), Nadire Mater (Turkey – bianet), Eman Shaban Mohammad Morsi (Egypt – Daily Star), Kenza Sefrioui (Morocco – Journal Hebdomadaire), Lurdes Vidal (Spain – Afkar Ideas).

Naela Husin Ali Khalil of the Al-Ayyam newspaper in Palestine was not able to join the meeting because she had difficulties leaving the country. (NM/TK/AG)