"Tuned in to Gender Equity" Workshop - Central America

An important product of the workshop is a set of indicators with which to identify if radio productions have a gender perspective. For example, if a programme transcends stereotypes, if it includes the voices of women in equal terms as those of men, if it validates the experiences and perspectives of the women, if it includes their opinion on all issues are some of the points of departure to evaluate radio productions in terms of gender equity. Participants unanimously agreed that "gender must be placed it in the marrow of our organisms" in reference to each person, to the centres of production, and in society at large. They also concluded that one of the greater difficulties for the inclusion of that perspective is sexual harassment and the lack of organisation of women to push the perspective in the programs, the centres, and in their own lives.
Among the fundamental actions designed are: promoting of alliances with other social movements and actors in society who are interested in the advancement of women and a change in men's roles; training in gender; organising to affirm the rights of the women; and, the creation of monitoringgroups that can assess the quality of the programs and their perspectives. Other strategies include actions to evaluate the social, economic, cultural and technical conditions in which radio production takes place, the reinforcement of the commitment towards the achievement of equity, and working to seek the sustainability of programs and projects that promote gender equality, including a range of actions that go from the care of individual and collective health of workers in radio on one end, to the challenging of the concentration and commodification of media in globalisation on the other.
Radio producers created an electronic mailbox called "in sintonia" by means of which they will circulate information about what each one will do to implement the agreements of the workshop in their radios and countries, and the preparation of a Strategic Planning Workshop on Gender that will be organised to take place in the year 2001.
The activity included teamwork sessions, plenaries, expositions and analysis of their own experiences in producing and broadcasting.
Live broadcasts took place during the workshop. In them, participants shared with a local and international audience "on the spot" productions about their recently acquired knowledge about gender. The productions were broadcast for the local audience in FIRE's program "Esta Legal" in Radio America, and internationally in FIRE's Web Radio.