Brief report of events and developments from Italy

It really seems like the GMMP has brought new energy within the quite fragmented yet passionate mobilizations around women and media in the country. But let me start from the beginning. We did organize a seminar in Padova, on March 1st, to present results of GMMP 2005 but not only. The intention was to tell the story of the project, its rationale and its potential and make the GMMP better know, but also to strengthen relations that have developed since last year, mainly with academics who have been working on gender and media issues and also media professionals who have also been active within their contexts.

Hosted by the University of Padova, the seminar was built around three main presentations, by Loredana Cornero from RAI, Sanja Sarvavka from Croatia and Monia Azzalini from the Osservatorio di Pavia. Each of them was invited to address the topic of women in the news from different perspectives: Loredana from her peculiar observatory inside RAI but also in conncetion to several projects with a European scope; Sanja from the priviledge position of having witnessed changes in her countries concerning the media but also the capacity of women groups to influence the context; and Monia offering an overall perspective on the Italian data from GMMP 2005, building on her former experience of monitoring the Italian context specifically on the role and relevance of women.

The second part of the seminar was devoted to brief interventions that contributed to define the broader meaning of an experience like the GMMP: Stefania (who had written a piece for Prima Comunicazione, the magazine read by journalists in Italy) back from London talked about what happened at the launch of the three weeks of action, Ilenia shared some of the interesting findings from her thesis concerning the GMMP as a resources for network building with different features in regional contexts. Finally Grazia Cotti Porro, from the National association of equal opportunities advisers presented the call our group had developed to engage political and media institutions, but also social forces in actions and initiatives aiming at a cultural reorientation towards a more balanced representation of men and women in the media.

Not too many people attended the seminar, also due to communication problems within the academic institution; nevertheless the debate was very interesting, the exchange among different perspective very lively and we all came out with a strong sense of actions needed to take things further. Among the ideas we shared: the possibility to publicly launch the Call on March 8th; the need to engage academic institutions explicitly on training and education of future media professionals with an awareness of gender dimension and challenges. Also we stressed the need to create space of dialogue between media professionals and scholars, but also students and groups of citizens. We also outlined the need and interest to create such spaces for dialogue in local contexts, engaging journalists in local newspapers and other media to discuss GMMP results with researchers, teachers, and young people, but also with institutional figures, such as advisers for equal opportunities, from local administrations. This seems to be crucial in order to outreach beyond “the usual niches” where the topics are discussed and getting closer to the people, discussing the gender dimension of topics of immediate relevance to them. We concluded with a very nice dinner where discussions continued in a very informal, friendly yet pro-active manner.

We therefore produced a post-event press statement anticipating that the public Call would have been presented on March 8th, in order to have the chance to continue discussing about GMMP and its results when it was more likely to get attention from the media. In fact we did receive some attention: myself and Monia have been interviewed by the Amisnet radio network (part of AMARC); we have also been invited to present GMMP results with a short intervention for RAInews24 (on March 8th). Finally we have been invited to take part in an hour long programme for GR Parliament, radio, where women journalists from RAI and the national press federation and academics alike expressed their opinion. Not just concerning women representation, but also visibility and invisibility in the media as work spaces (data are been diffused from different sources, also due to the pre-electoral period and related discussion).

What I find very stimulating is the fact that it really seems like the different networks which have been active around women and media issues, those that relate to professionals and those that involve other interested subjects, are actually coming together, recognizing each other, feeling to need to overcome distances in language and perspectives; and possibly building on-going spaces where activities, projects and research results can converge and turn into common actions.

Too early to say what the future will bring. But it is relevant to mention that an event took place today, March 14th, in Rome, promoted by the union of RAI women journalists, precisely on the challenges outlined by the GMMP, while we are trying to organize together a national event, to take place in Rome, partly directed to journalists in order to get some more attention on GMMP findings, partly devoted to the identification of lines for action, within a division of labour in which journalists, researchers, institutions and citizens would contribute to advocacy, education, public discussions and sensibilization, toward a more fair and better balanced representation of women.

Long Way to go. However those were interesting signs of possible impacts of networking. And a very rewarding personal experience, a feeling I am sure is shared by many in my country but also in all countries where the GMM and follow ups took place.

Good luck to all of us,

Claudia Padovani