Gender Links

GIVING A VOICE TO WOMEN IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

When you turn on a television or radio in southern Africa, you will notice that women hardly have a voice in the media. In politics they are also a small minority. Consequently, their perspective and experiences are structurally underexposed, which does not at all contribute to the goal of a region in which men and women have equal opportunities. Gender Links wishes to change this.

‘In Africa, the necessity of providing a voice to poor and marginalised people, a majority of whom are women, is often pointed out. But Gender Links is one of the few non-governmental organisations that actually make an effort to achieve this,’ says director Colleen Lowe Morna of Hivos partner Gender Links.

Gender Links mainly focuses on the media, politics and civil society. The organisation conducts research, organises training programmes and provides well-founded advice – all intended to make people in these sectors aware of the under-representation of women and to increase this representation. Lowe Morna: ‘We offer people – from women in management positions to activists and youth leaders – the skills to attract media attention. We also teach them to express themselves in the media, with the aid of the technologies that they have access to, such as e-newsletters.’

Hivos supports Gender Links because Hivos wants to enable marginalised people to let themselves be heard and to stand up for their own rights. In this context, Hivos devotes specific attention in its policy to the improvement of the position of women. Gender Links receives specific appreciation because it strategically uses ICT in the realisation of its goals. The fact that the organisation plays a key role in large regional conferences, such as the “Gender and Media Summit”, is another plus, as is the fact that Gender Links has created an extensive network since its founding in 2001.

‘In this region, we have cooperated with many dozens of non-governmental media organisations, training institutes and lobbying groups,’ says Lowe Morna. ‘In addition we are co-founder of the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network and coordinator of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. We are not even such a large organisation. But we do leave large footprints.’

Take a look at the clip of Gender Links employee Judith Mtsewa. She works in Johannesburg, South-Africa.

ABOUT THIS PARTNER (IN ENGLISH)

Gender Links was established in 2001 as a Southern African NGO specialising in gender, media, governance and development. GL seeks to play a facilitating and co-ordinating role as well as initiating new ideas where appropriate. GL seeks to contribute to the development and sharing of a truly Southern African knowledge base on gender equality with a strong emphasis on mainstreaming gender in the media. GL is committed to a Southern Africa in which women and men are able to realise their full potential and participate equally in all aspects of public and private life.
GL's mission is to transform gender relations in and through the media by:
- conducting research on gender disparities in the internal structures and editorial output of the media as well as working with media institutions to develop corrective policies;
- developing gender training materials for media and assisting media institutions in applying these;
- creating and sharing content that demonstrates how gender perspective can be integrated into media coverage;
- taking advantage of opportunities presented by information and communication technologies for advancing gender equality;
- strengthening the media and communication skills of gender activists and women in decision making;
- providing research and advisory services on gender and governance.
GL also maintains strategic partnerships with networks and serves as a catalyst for gender transformation by working through existing structures. GL is part of the Africa Gender and Media Initiative (GEM) - a partnership between three organisations (GL, Inter Press Service and the African Women and Child Feature Service) committed to fair representation of women and increased coverage of gender issues in the media.
The target group of GL are female and male journalists, their institutions and media training institutions in Southern Africa. Media training has been provided to journalists in countries like Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Lesotho and Mozambique.
The motivation for Hivos support is that GL's programmes contribute towards the elimination of gender stereotyping, build the confidence of women and change institutions that contribute to the negative portrayal of women thus boosting women's empowerment.

Type of organisation

Service organization /non-profit

Sector

Gender, Women and Development

Country

Regional: Southern Africa

Founded

2001

Hivos partner since

2002

Website

http://www.genderlinks.org.za/

More information

» | About this partner (in English)

» | About this partner's projects (in English)

CONTACT

Gender Links

LINKS

» | http://www.genderlinks.org.za/

Gender Links-Institutional Support
DAC-sectors	Human rights
Location	Regional
Beneficiary	human rights defenders
activity	Produce opinion and commentary pieces written by women for publication in mainstream media
Direct outreach	120 - Beneficiaries: poor and/or marginalised women and men
Indirect outreach	420 - Intermediary level
activity	Develop and publish through the virtual centre gender and media case studies for training
Direct outreach	50 - Intermediary level
Indirect outreach	400 - Intermediary level
Contract total	210.000
Contractperiod	01-03-2010 until 28-02-2013

Description

In this contract, Gender Links will link gender activists and the media; giving voice to women and prompting debates as well as showing in practical ways how to mainstream gender in the media as well as contributing to a distinctive Southern African knowledge base on this subject matter. Gender Links is being supported to carry out three components of its work.

" Gender Links will during the contract period run the Gender Opinion and Commentary Service in the region, through training ordinary women to write and comment on issues, publish them and encourage mainstream media to pick the commentaries for further publication.
" Gender Links will continue with the special brand of "I Stories" which is a first hand account of gender injustices that individual women have experienced. Stories covered will include violence against women, experiences of women in leadership, and living with HIV. The objectives of this series of publication is to build the capacity of those whose voices are often not heard as well as showing the media that such voices are the essence of good journalism.
" The last component is the development of case studies for trainings in media and gender which Gender Links will make available through their website to media houses and other organizations that train journalists and writers in general.

Institutional support
DAC-sectors	Reproductive and sexual health (BSS) Legal and judicial development Human rights Strengthening civil society
Location	Johannesburg
Beneficiary	not relevant/other
activity	Institutional support and capcity building
Direct outreach	10 - Intermediary level
Indirect outreach	200 - Policy level/ public opinion
activity	Virtual resource centre
Direct outreach	10 - Intermediary level
Indirect outreach	1000 - Policy level/ public opinion
activity	Opinion and commentary service
Direct outreach	100 - Policy level/ public opinion
Indirect outreach	1000 - Policy level/ public opinion
Contract total	338.884
Contractperiod	01-03-2007 until 28-02-2010

Description

RA028G03 Gender Links Institutional Support Activities
Hivos support will be directed towards the following activities
" Support will be extended towards the follow up to the Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS), GL which resulted in the establishment of a virtual resource centre on its website consisting of case studies from the GMBS. These studies are indexed and can be searched by country, theme and functional area. The support will enable development and maintenance of the resource centre and the addition of an average of ten new case studies and advertisement of the centre.
" The write about rights programme will be supported to train women experts to write and publish opinion pieces in the mainstream media as part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service.
" Institutional support will be provided to support staff and related core costs that are not covered through project funding.