Gender, Media & ICTs

Everyone can see how quickly digital communication has changed. But not everyone notices the snail’s pace of transforming gender inequality in media and through media. Even fewer of us fully grasp the complex underlying factors and how best to address them. But one thing is clear: we need to speed up the pace of progress in gender equality. We need to take advantage of digital opportunities to advance this goal, and we need to fight new trends that reinforce and exacerbate the existing patterns of discrimination, stereotyping and oppression.

The initiative of this book responds to a practical need identified by UNESCO and higher education partners in the Unitwin Network on Gender, Media and ICTs. This is, in times of rapid change, the imperative to equip a new generation of journalists and other media practitioners to be fully gender-sensitive, both in their workplaces and in their work products.

UNESCO, together with the Unitwin Network on Gender Media and ICTs, urges journalism educators to use this publication to cultivate gender awareness in the journalists, media professionals and communicators of tomorrow. Without us being sensitive to the inequalities entailed, it is not possible to respond to the challenge, let alone to help with transformation. This publication therefore seeks to help achieve the full development of each human being, irrespective of sex or gender, and in conjunction with the possibilities of the digital age.