The Elena Cornaro University Centre for gender studies and policies is part of the IFJ-led consortium that launched Re-writing the story: Gender, media and politics, a EU-funded project aimed at addressing barriers to the fair representation and portrayal of women and men in politics (Citizenship, Equality, Rights and Values Programme CERV).

Working with frontline journalists, news media managers, journalists’ unions and associations, gender experts, media self-regulatory bodies, women active in political life, academics and, crucially, the next generation of media professionals, the project seeks to initiate reforms in European media with regard to newsroom culture, policies and processes. This to improve the professional understanding and practices with regard to gender portrayal of women and men in political and public life and by doing so empower citizens to make informed decisions, especially with regard to the elections of the European Parliament in 2024.

To achieve its objectives the two-year project will:

● Research the challenges and obstacles to women and men’s equal participation and portrayal in political and public life in the media and map existing best practices across private and public media and platforms;

● Develop specialised training modules for journalists and media newsrooms and make them openly accessible on the AGEMI platform in a dedicated section;

● Deliver training for 28 IFJ journalists’ trainers to help build national capacity and amplify ability to secure change;

● Deliver tailored training courses for journalists and journalism and media students on gender portrayal in politics and gendered communicative practices;

● Build bridges between media, communication and journalism students and media professionals;

● Run an innovative Peer-to Peer programme, working with newsroom managers, producers, journalists and journalists’ unions to produce and adopt protocols, guidelines, agreements and initiate a mindset shift towards gender equality in editorial decisions and newsroom organisation and working conditions.

The role of the Elena Cornaro University Centre in making change

The Elena Cornaro University Centre for gender studies and policies is in charge of coordinating academic activities that will involve students and teachers in media and communication from the University of Padova and other interested universities across Europe, amongst which the United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Croatia. This will be done in the context of the UNESCO UNiTWIN Network on Gender Media and ICT and in collaboration with the Gender and Communication sections of the IAMCR and ECREA international associations. By the end of the project more than 400 students will have taken part in seminars, collected and organized data and conducted relevant research, collaborated amongst themselves through virtual exchange activities, and elaborated creative outputs that will inform the Re-writing the story project training modules.
The University of Padova will host the final conference in June 2024.

Partners in Re-writing the story: Gender, media and politics

● IFJ (Brussels), with the specific involvement of the Croatia journalists' union and the Union of Cyprus journalists

● University of Padova (Italy), in collaboration with the AGEMI Platform (Advancing Gender Equality in Media Industries)

● COPEAM (Italy headquarter) with the involvement of public broadcasters from six European countries

For information: claudia.padovani@unipd.it