Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a
peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Providing women and girls with equal access
to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic
decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and
humanity at large. Therefore, gender equality and women’s empowerment are one of
the overarching priorities of UNESCO. This is a strategy for making women’s as well
as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation,
monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and
societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.
The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.Increasing attention is being placed on
gender equality issues globally, buoyed by several legal and normative instruments,
conventions and declarations. Chief among these are the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action. The latter, which was the outcome of the United Nations Fourth
World Conference on Women, in 1995, emphasizes the key role of media to
promote gender equality in all spheres; all stake-holders are called to join forces to
combat "stereotyping of women and inequality in women’s access to and participation
in all communication systems, especially in the media". UNESCO’s commitment and
strategy to this end is pursued through a two-fold approach: (i) gender-specific
programming and (ii) taking gender-focused actions in all of UNESCO’s fields of work.
UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector has fully embraced this commitment
and has engaged globally in a wide range of gender-specific initiatives across its
divisions and main actions. Equality between women and men working in the media,
and equality in news reporting on women and men, are of equal importance and are
being stridently pursued. In cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists
and many other partners, UNESCO has adopted this global framework
of Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media (GSIM). These indicators have been developed to
enable effective assessment of related development in the media.
In order to further enrich the GSIM resource, and as a fundamental step for its
completion, a second round of consultation was carried out online with UNESCO media
partners globally. Broadcasting and print associations contributed comments,
suggestions and insights to further enhance the document. The consultation with these
associations was essential because it enables UNESCO to embed into the GSIM
the perspectives of these key partners. This enables us to stress that use
of the GSIM is not an attempt to limit freedom of expression and the independence of
media, but to voluntarily enrich these underlying characteristics.
UNESCO is confident that, if fully implemented, the GSIM will produce an impact in both
qualitative and quantitative terms.