General Union of Palestinian Women

The National Strategy for the Advancement of Palestinian Women

Palestinian Women and the Media

Existing Problems:

An Overview:

The Palestinian media, in general, is subject to Israeli occupation measures which aim at concealing the problems emanating from the occupation and fight all efforts at highlighting these problems by the Palestinian media. Furthermore the Palestinian media suffers from shortage in human and financial resources.
Despite the fact that Palestinian women have high visibility in the media reflecting their effective role in the national and social struggle, the media has refrained from dealing with social issues which women suffer from, due to national issue priorities and to the limited utilization of the media by women centers and institutions to expose and deal with women issues.
Revitalizing the special role of Palestinian women in the national and social struggle of the Palestinian people requires a forward looking media policy that supports gender equality and gives credit to women's active participation at all levels of the national struggle for freedom, in order to establish democracy and civil society institutions and to change the stereotype image of women.

Objectives:

1. To work towards establishing a public information media that serves social and national issues including women's issues.
2. To support posting female media professionals in policy and decision making positions in the fields of culture and public information.
3. To enhance women's skills in all aspects of the media and to encourage women/girls to attend media educational and training programs.
4. To spread and firmly fix concepts and values based on democracy, and gender equality by means of information campaigns in coordination with specialized media departments.
5. To change women's negative image in all forms of media.

Procedures:

1. To draw up an advanced national media policy to help highlight the role of women, to spread an advanced social education and to shed light both on the positive aspects of society and Palestinian pioneer women figures.
2. To establish a data information and documentation center on particularly on women's issues and concerns .
3. To disseminate information and have it accessible to all sectors of women within affordable means.
4. To provide media training opportunities for women to enable them to participate effectively in setting media policy and to encourage them to work in the field of press and public information media.
5. To have mutual exchange of experiences with Arab and international women in this field.
6. To spread democracy and encourage women writers and to support research centers and institutions that conduct their work on women's concerns.
7. To prepare radio and television programs directed towards women and men simultaneously to highlight the negative aspects of some of the existing social traditions and norms that are based on gender discrimination.
8. To encourage writers to produce literature that helps establish awareness in various fields with the aim of establishing social concepts of equality and democracy and to
stress the role of Palestinian women throughout history.