Women Hold Up Half the Sky

Professor Thanh-Huyen Ballmer-Cao,
UN Photo by Jean-Marc Ferré

A panel on “Communicating to Women on Global Issues” convened on the occasion of International Women’s Day at the Palais des Nations on March 6 ¹. The panel was an opportunity to examine how women’s magazines and other media with a high female audience communicate on major issues of our time.  The goal was to discuss the role of mass media in successfully shaping culture and society toward a more equitable future.

The main suggestions from the panel were:

1. Mobilize women and connect them to global issues by:
• Showing them the impact of gender differences.
• Empowering women by making them aware of the actions they can take.
• Involving women without victimizing or stigmatizing them.
2. Empower women to effectively use social networking sites. Today 2.5 billion people use the Internet and 1 billion people use Facebook.  Women are 8 times more likely to use social networks because they have freedom of expression.
3. Use the media to educate women voters, because that is the first step towards moving women into leadership positions.
4. Focus on topical, specific, attractive issues related to women’s rights and get them involved in the debate. The broad subject of women’s rights is not often in the media, because the media focuses on sudden events rather than long-term problems.
5. Make women’s rights less of a theoretical topic. Give your audience someone specific to relate too. Utilizing charismatic icons that are great models and embody The Empowered Women.
6. Model your message to target the heart of your audience. Women speak from the heart and if you have to choose between the heart and the mind, the heart is much stronger.
7. Utilize International Women’s Day as a spark to start the discussion.

Leah Constance Nodvin
IFUW Intern