Database, Survey & SUMMIT of Women’s Social Justice Media Organizations
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Images
Preeti Shekar (l. above) of "Women’s Magazine" (KPFA), records Cynthia Enloe’s closing remarks at WAM/Women, Action and the Media, 2007.
Sample images & logos from women's social justice media organizations
Topics:
Target Audience:
college students, educators, engaged artists and non-profits, government agencies, historians, immigrant groups, libraries, philanthropic community, public policy makers, public television audiences, schools, women, youth and underseved communities
Geographic Area:
Budget
Raised to date: $ 50,500.00
Estimate to complete: $ 25,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $ 75,500.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 04/30/2009
Key Personnel
Ariel Dougherty
Initiator and National Project Coordinator
Ariel Dougherty has initiated Media Equity Collaborative. She serves as National Project Coordinator of Women’s Media Equity Collaborative, the first project. As associate director of Lynn Hershman’s documentary, Women, Art & Revolution, she assisted in raising a single $100,000 contribution to this film on the Feminist Art Movement. Her article, The Intersections of Women’s Media and The Struggle for Our Human Rights to Create a Just Society, was published in the Fall 2008 edition of Global Media Journal. Dougherty was a co-founder of Women Make Movies in 1969, which she and Sheila Paige incorporated as a feminist media teaching and distribution organization in 1972.
Lillian Jiménez serves as Interim Executive Director of Chica Luna Productions in New York City. Among her many film works are What You Could Do With a Nickel? and SisterSong. She is currently completing "Antonia Pantoja: !Presente!" a documentary on the life and work of the visionary leader. In her extensive career she helped found National Association of Independent Latino Producers, worked at the Funding Exchange’s Paul Robeson Fund for Film, and has consulted with scores of arts and media organizations.
Susan Feiner is a Professor of Economics and chairs the University of Southern Maine’s Women’s Studies Program. She has written extensively on feminist economics, directing that writing to a wide public audience through publications like Women's Enews, Dollars&Sense, and The Women's Review of Books. She is founding editor of Feminist Economics. She is co-author of the award-winning book, Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization (with Professor D. Barker, University of Michigan Press, 2004).
Lisa Rudman is the Executive Director of National Radio Project, producer of the weekly social justice radio show “Making Contact”, now broadcast on over 200 radio stations and at http://www.radioproject.org. She directed their Women’s Desk from 1998 to 2003 and deepened the organization's commitment to training and community collaborations. A long time grassroots activist, Lisa also is an award winning documentary video maker.
Lisa McLaughlin, Associate Professor of Communication and Women’s Studies at Miami University (Ohio), is a founding editor and co-editor of Feminist Media Studies, an international, peer-reviewed journal. She has authored numerous publications on feminist political economy of communications, women and work in multinational technology corporations, and gender and information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D).
Shireen Mitchell is founding Executive Director of Digital Sisters, Inc., a technology social service agency based in Washington, DC. Digital Sisters is committed to effective technology integration for the social, civic, and economic security into the lives of low-income communities. She blogs regularly at http://wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/ and http://www.Socialmediawoc.com. Recently Shireen helped to organize the highly successful fem2pt0.com conference. She serves as Vice Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations.
Karly Beaumont is the Program Coordinator at Chica Luna Productions, a holistic media training center for low income women of color. Her short film, I’m Not Here deals with sexual abuse. She has a feature film script in development. She teaches Chica Luna’s core F-Word multimedia justice project for young women. Karly started her career in theatre and has worked with two of the most innovative theater production companies in New York City: Project 400 Theater Group and Two Noses Productions.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Third Wave Foundation | $ 1,500.00 | 06/01/2009 | |
| On the Issues magazine | $ 1,500.00 | 05/08/2009 | |
| In kind donations | $ 20,500.00 | 10/01/2008 | |
| Social Science Research Council | $ 30,000.00 | 07/01/2008 |
Short Synopsis
From Issues for Your Tissues radio to Make/Shift magazine 300+ women centered social justice media outlets produce blogs, radio shows, newspapers, TV shows, etc on a regular basis throughout the US. Media Equity Collaborative is coalescing these isolated groups via a survey and a SUMMIT (July 16) to prioritize program needs, strategize networks and build a sustainable fund to ensure stability and growth for this vastly under resourced community.
Description/Treatment
Women centered media are the primary outlets for true pictures/voices/words of everyday actions of women activists and leaders, womanist theory and culture, girls hopes and dreams, and dynamic feminist thinking and policies. A loud and broad cacophony of voices/images/commentary is vital to maintain a forceful and lively feminist public sphere. Collectively it cajoles at the dominant public sphere and stimulates new policies. Women centered social justice media are central information tools without which women will not advance.
Media Equity Collaborative, an initiative long over due, is committed to establishing a new model of funding that strengthens the entire field, broadens collective reach of women’s social justice media and is sustainable. MEC’s long term goal is to bring in a swath of new resources to support this media work which honor core principles without compromise --- to racial and economic justice, grassroots political activism, women’s empowerment and human rights, and the evolution of a self-determined healthy environment and culture for all.
Women’s Media Equity Collaborative is the first project supported by a $30,000 grant from Social Science Research Council (Ford Foundation regrant funds.) Three tasks are in process. A database, with assistance from Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, has been created of over 300 women’s media advocacy, production, teaching and distribution organizations. A two-phase needs assessment survey is currently being conducted of these organizations. A SUMMIT of Women’s Social Justice Media Organizations will be held July 16, 2009 at Allied Media Conference in Detroit. Designed in collaboration with the AMC INCITE! Track, the SUMMIT will bring isolated groups together to unite in common cause for women’s empowerment. They will build trust, network and prioritize programs, and from various models create a new sustainable fund.
The pressing need is to raise funds to provide scholarships to assist the field to attend the SUMMIT. Priorities are to women of color, low income women, rural women, the disabled and moms. MEC wants to ensure a broad and diverse mix of constituents to attend this vital policy and agenda setting meeting for women centered media.
August 2009 - July 2011
In a second step, MEC will launch a series of mini grant projects specifically geared to the most pressing needs of the field of women’s social justice media organizations. The field has clearly underscored that development of women’s media “must build up from existing programs”. Further by generating even small amounts of support out into the field, MEC will be able to fulfill its mandate of building up the base, while it constructs a more long term sustainable endowment from a growing collaboration with donors.
Areas for mini grants will be further defined at the SUMMIT. However, from preliminary discussions two major areas have emerged where both small and timely grants can ease daily pressures on these organizations.
Womanist Reporter Investigating Bank / wRib will assist reporters to cover breaking news. Awarded on a revolving basis, by a rotating council, reporters will be awarded stipends to cover and file their stories with feminist and progressive media outlets. Forty percent of awards will go to women of color and grassroots women news gathers. These modest stipends will have a key impact on 1) building a strong pool of feminist news gatherers, 2) adding critical support for women’s media programs, and 3) providing audiences dynamic feminist social justice news.
Policy & Presence, is the other mini grant area. It will fill the glaring hole in women’s media organization representation at media policy sessions and the persistent lack of media policy that expressly reflects women and girls. For example, “women’s media ownership” is fraught with inherent contradictions and demands serious feminist analysis. Mini grants will be awarded to the field that 1) create a series of women-identified media policy papers; and 2) send delegations to officially represent these policy positions at meetings like National Conf on Media Reform, NOW, AAUW, FCC, etc. Policy & Presence grants will increase identity of the field as well as its credibility. All of this in turn will increase donors.
MEC expects to raise $150,000 on average over the next two years to dispense funds back out to grassroots women centered media.