Bristol's Representations of Women in the Media project and event

[JessinAvalon]

Hi all
Yesterday afternoon, a couple of hundred feminists packed out a room at the Watershed in Bristol for an event called "Where Are The Women?" to discuss women's absence in national and local media.

There was a panel of speakers, including two of our very own Bristol Feminist Network members, Bidisha and Christina Zaba, who sits on the Equality Panel of the National Union of Journalists.

The Representations of Women in the Media project was started in 2008 as a joint project between Bristol Fawcett Society and Bristol Feminist Network. It was carried out again in November 2009 and there will be another one soon. Some of the findings from the study were presented by the panel and they have also been mentioned in Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion.

A website has now been set up so please take a look and there is a section for getting involved.

www.rowitm.org/

Here are some of the presentations from previous years. One I cobbled together using imagery from The Sunday Times is listed on the page below under the title of 'News International'. I was increasingly annoyed by the pictures of women that appeared in The Sunday Times whether relevant to the story being reported or not (usually not). There is usually a half naked or naked woman on the front page of The Sunday Times advertising anything from holidays to high heeled shoes. (I don't buy it but I used to and my parents buy it every week so I still see it from time to time in case anyone was wondering why I don't just ignore the paper altogether.)

www.rowitm.org/findings.html

Please let me know if you'd like more information and please get involved!

[JessinAvalon]

The sentence above should read:

"there was a panel of speakers, including two of our very own Bristol Feminist Network members, AND Bidisha and Christina Zaba, who sits on the Equality Panel of the National Union of Journalists."