WUNRN
By Frieda Werden – WINGS – Women’s International News Gathering Service
The Beijing Platform for
Action & Community Radio – Presentation by Frieda Werden at the UNECE
Beijing + 20 Forum in Geneva, Nov. 4, 2014
When I was a girl, it was
said that the three most important means of communication were “Telephone,
telegraph, and tell a woman.”
Now you could take that as an
insult, or you could take it as a call to action – we know a lot, and we need
to get it heard.
Ever since the '70s, we've
had a lot of basically internal women's movement publications and
websites. And once in a while an American football player punches out his
fiancee in front of a video camera and domestic violence goes viral as an
issue. Or, you raise more than a million dollars to have a women's press room
at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. That was a media
breakthrough in 1994, after 20-plus years of public denials about violence
against women.... But where is the day in day out discussion with the
public about women's issues? Where can you get public space for that
without paying a fortune or kowtowing to advertisers?
Radio! Community and
campus radio, is what I've found.
Community radio is a
worldwide movement committed to getting under-covered voices and ideas onto the
air. Women have a major role in it, including international and regional
women's networks. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters has
lobbied for decades to get licensing frameworks adopted, country by
country. Community radio is big and getting bigger across the US, Canada
and Latin America. In 17 countries of Europe it's legal now, and the
Community Media Forum Europe is lobbying for its full recognition as part of
the “third sector.” It's madly successful across Africa, especially since the
World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, where donors got on
board. ...Community radio was finally re-legalized in the UK a few years
back, quickly leading India to legalize. Community radio has been saving lives
in Nepal, former Yugoslavia, Haiti.... It's in Jordan and at long last in
Tunisia.
And you can quite probably
walk into a station in your own town or call them up and say – “we have an
issue we want to talk about on the air.” Start by being a guest.
Then ask for a regular program. Maybe they have a women's collective or
department you can join --, or maybe you'll want to start one.
You can access the station's
audience and bring your supporters to the station as audience. You can
get free training to use the simple equipment for one or all of your group, and
later advanced training to make fancy programs if you like. You can broadcast
grassroots or expert interviews, round-table discussions, recordings of
speeches, live coverage from rallies... anything with sound.
And for women, the kicker is
: the audience has to listen to you instead of judging how you look. You
can even be anonymous.
Some people like to put down
community radio. They say “ah, you're only preaching to the
converted.” Well, If you don't preach to the converted, they don't stay
converted long. Why do you think there's church every Sunday? And with
radio there's a reach-out factor – people turn on the dial, and - “what's this?
Interesting!” Or, to be fair, they might say “Not interesting!”
When you're part of the media it's part of your challenge to learn, stay
creative, and make it interesting!
You think, Why not just write
something on the internet?
There's something about the
human voice that says more, much more, than mere words. Your warmth, your
guests' passion, the music of the language can be more convincing than any
essay.
Besides, bringing other
people into an in-person conversation – listening to them, privileging their
voices – that builds alliances. It builds community. And it builds
audience.
Why not just put your audio
on the internet?
Despite the hype, not many
people listen to podcasts compared to radio. While big commercial radio
is going down, local radio listening is up. A recent North America survey
showed even people who do listen to podcasts listen to the radio even
more. And being on the radio schedule is like having a great google
ranking – people know you are there.
I could exhort you all day,
but let's move on to section J [The Media section of the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action, unanimously adopted by participating countries in 1995
at the UN's 4th World Conference on Women] – what's in it for the
community radio sector?
Here's a quote: “Everywhere,
the potential exists for the media to make a far greater contribution to the
advancement of women.” There are women's radio stations (one in
Oslo and one in Kampala, for example); but I've yet to find a community station
in North America with more than 35% women on the air. By world standards,
that's not bad, but let's try harder to take up our share of space.
Funders could help by supporting women's-program coordinators. Often
women choose to work collaboratively instead of hosting a one-ego show; and a
paid coordinator vastly extends the life of such collaborations.
Another quote: “Women should
be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge, and access to information
technology.” Your government's licensing of community radio stations has
opened that door for you already. Step through it. Most commercial and
public broadcasters today still get their start from community
radio. Community media also are leaders in adapting to new
technologies – you can learn from them.
Paragraph 240 calls for media
systems to include women in developing regulatory mechanisms. In Canada
and at the international level, community radio organizations require 50%
of directors be women. These directors develop interventions with
regulators – you can take part through them.
Section J objectives with
respect to content can be pursued through community radio – plus, events
you develop for radio can be tweeted, facebooked, photographed, videoed, turned
into print documents, and splashed all over the internet. Many shows are doing
that today.
Down near the bottom of
section J, all three sectors– media, governments, and NGOs --are enjoined to
“support the development of, and finance, as appropriate, alternative media and
the use of all means of communication to disseminate information to and about
women and their concerns.”
There are a few ways I see
government and commercial media supporting community radio as alternative
media, but also I see supports being threatened or actually removed. If
you become part of this media, you'll have a stake in these issues and follow
them.
To wrap up: I've been working
with community and public media since 1973, and syndicating a half-hour weekly
radio program by and about the global women's movement for 28 years. It's
my experience that community radio is where the openness to women's
issues and voices tends to be greatest, and I would be extremely happy to see
many more women move in on that openness. .
We find in this world that it
can be a quick business to destroy livelihoods and cultures, creating traumas
that ring down through generations. The much harder job is to heal, and that
requires building relations in community.
Birgitte Jallov of Denmark
has helped build community radios in Africa for decades, and measures their
impact. She told me in an interview that the number one change people
attributed to the radio in all communities she studied was: “Women are being
beaten up less... We're being beaten up less.” Privileging women's
voices, ideas, skills, and solidarity has done that. It's my hope you
will adopt community radio as your own and do the same.
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Frieda
Werden attended the UN World Conferences on Women in 1975 and 1995. She
has worked as a volunteer and professionally in public and community radio in
the US and Canada since 1973. In 1986, she co-founded WINGS: Women's
International News Gathering Service; as its series producer, she
internationally syndicates a weekly half-hour radio program by and about women
around the world. WINGS has been honoured by the US National Federation of
Community Broadcasters and Canada's National Campus and Community Radio Association.
Werden has served as North America Women's Representative and then N.A. Vice
President of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), and
President of the International Association of Women in Radio and TV.