Step It Up for Gender Equality Media Compact

Step It Up draws on global partnership, inviting media partners to play their part in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda and focus on gender equality and women's rights issues on two fronts: (i) in their reporting, disrupting stereotypes and biases, and (ii) in increasing the number of women in the media, including in leadership and decision-making functions. Leading up to the launch event, more than 35 leading media outlets signed up as founding members of the Media Compact. From grassroots to national and international media players, the diverse group of initial members reach millions of readers and viewers in Africa, Arab States, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin American regions. While each media outlet may define for itself how best to implement the partnership, the commitment, at a minimum, includes the following:

• Champion women's rights and gender equality issues through editorial articles, features, and news coverage.
• Ensure production of high-quality stories with a focus on gender equality and women's rights, with a minimum of two per month.
• Ensure inclusion of women as sources in stories produced, aiming for gender parity, including across diverse subjects such as business, technology, science, and engineering.
• Adopt a gender-sensitive Code of Conduct on Reporting.
• In orientation and training of staff members, ensure guidelines for gender-sensitive reporting.
• Through gender-responsive decision-making, enable equality in the newsrooms by ensuring women journalists are given similar opportunities as their male colleagues and can cover diverse subjects from politics to business, science, sports, and technology, while encouraging male journalists to also cover diverse issues, including women's rights and gender equality stories.
• Ensure women journalists are provided mentors and guidance for career advancement.

UN Women offers the following for Step it Up Media Compact partners to help faciliate their work to communicate about women's rights issues with the public:

• Listing as a partner on UN Women's website and announcement through UN Women's social media channels.
• Amplification of content on gender equality and women's rights written/produced by the media partners through its network of UN Women's social media channels and via distribution to its 90 offices worldwide.
• Free editorial content, produced on a regular basis and provided in advance by UN Women. This includes thought-leader op-eds, feature stories, infographics, first-person narratives, photo essays, videos, and more.
• Priority when requesting interviews with UN Women's officials and advance notice of upcoming events hosted by UN Women, with regular access to UN Women's media team for up-to-date information. Special access to the organisation's events at UN Women offices/UN Secretariat, through which they can undertake backstage coverage of certain high-profile events and pre-event interviews.
• One-on-one conversations with UN Women experts who can provide exclusive on-the-record or background briefings on a range of topics. These interactions are one-on-one conversations, designed to assist research and facilitate in-depth stories.
• Facilitation of introductions to grassroots groups and field colleagues who are experts on the issues as well as the geo-political landscape.
• A possible role at UN Women events, such as that of a moderator and/or speaker.

Step It Up for Gender Equality Media Compact is part of UN Women's Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality, which was launched on International Women's Day 2015 to ask governments to make national commitments to close the gender equality gap - from enhancing women's leadership and participation at all levels of decision-making to preventing and addressing social norms and stereotypes that perpetuate gender inequality, discrimination, and violence against women and girls, and to launching public mobilisation and national awareness-raising campaigns to promote gender equality. Click here to learn more, and/or join the conversation around #Planet5050 on social media and follow @UN_Women on Twitter.

Women, Gender, Rights

"Media have great influence over how we perceive and understand the world around us. That influence has many dimensions. Even when reporting is entirely factually accurate, if it is reported predominantly by men, about men, it is actually misrepresenting the real state of the world. At UN Women, we want to address this through partnership to change the media landscape and make media work for gender equality," said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.