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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is calling on all the media to ensure that the world’s news output on 8 March 2000 is produced under the editorial responsibility of women. UNESCO supports women’s efforts to become full partners in all decision-making and policy-making fora.
In media where no women have ever held the position of editor-in-chief, this offers a first experience of editorial responsibility carried out by one of their women journalists. It is an important step, not only for the woman journalist herself, but also for the media’s entire news team and for their public. Women who do hold editorial responsibility in their media are asked to ensure that they are on duty for that day’s news, or are replaced by another woman. It is entirely up to each media to determine how to implement the initiative. Let us know of any special plans and we will post them on this site. Write to tell us what you think of this initiative and of the situation of women in the media. If you support this initiative, spread the word – March 8 is not far off!
Call by the Director-General of UNESCO for a world-wide media initiative to mark International Women’s Day (8 March 2000)
 I call on the media world-wide to ensure that women journalists have editorial charge of the news on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2000. If journalists, the media and the organizations that represent them come together to make this initiative a success, then for the first time in history a day’s news output in both print and broadcasting, throughout the world, will fall under the editorial responsibility of women.
By drawing attention to the glass ceiling that still limits the number of women journalists who rise to key editorial positions in the media, UNESCO is pursuing the commitment made at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 to defend equal professional opportunities for women. I firmly believe that this issue must remain at the forefront of the agenda of each society – and of the international community – until gender balance is achieved at every level in the work place.
Through this focus on equal opportunities in the media, UNESCO also wants to emphasise another important point: the free flow of independent and pluralistic information is best ensured if all talented journalists have an equal chance of becoming editors and media executives, purely on the basis of their professional ability and without regard to gender, ethnic origin, religion or any other unconnected factor.
International Women’s Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the situation of women and to seek responses to the obstacles they face. Let us make 8 March 2000 a day to remember by seeing to it that women make the news.
Koïchiro Matsuura
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