International Media

Women's Edition

Profiles of Members

Name: Gabriela Adamesteanu
Title and Organization: Editor-in-Chief, 22 magazine; weekly columnist, România Libera
Circulation/audience: 22 Magazine, 25,000 copies (weekly)
City, Country: Bucharest, Romania
Profile: The mission of 22, Romania's leading political, social and cultural weekly, is to promote democracy in Romania. The weekly was named for the day in December of 1989 when Ceaucescu's regime ended. In addition to editing that magazine, Ms. Adamesteanu writes a weekly column that is published in the most widely read Romanian newspaper, România Libera. She also is a novelist. Ms. Adamesteanu was selected in 1997 to participate in the Romanian delegation to the meeting "Vital Voices: Women in Democracy" in Vienna and was the only Romanian journalist who participated in the Fourth European Ministers' Conference under the auspices of the Council of Europe on the Inequality Between Men and Women. She was rapporteur for the Council of Europe meeting in November of 1998, the first conference organized in Romania on the subject of domestic violence. She was elected vice-president of the Romanian PEN Club Center in March 2000. Ms. Adamesteanu strives to fill what she perceives as a great void in her country's knowledge of women's health, and has published numerous articles and supplements on these issues in an effort to bring them into public debate. Her membership in Women's Edition has helped her to "discover the world" through a solidarity and friendship with journalists from other countries.

Name: Harikala Adhikary
Title and Organization: Associate Editor, Gorkhapatra (newspaper), program producer, "Milijuli" (radio program)
Circulation/audience: Gorkhapatra, 50,000 copies (daily), six readers per copy. "Milijuli" (weekly throughout the country)
City, Country: Kathmandu, Nepal
Profile: Gorkhapatra is the oldest and largest daily newspaper in Nepal, with over 100 years of regular publication. "Milijuli" is a radio program dedicated to building awareness about women's empowerment and development. Broadcasts incorporate a variety of issues, such as women's health, political, social, and legal status, population, gender-based violence, early marriage, trafficking, and girls' education. The program is so popular that many international non-governmental organizations have demonstrated their support, and many audience members have formed "Milijuli" clubs. Ms. Adhikary contributed as a columnist for Jana Aawaj (People's Voice) and Sambad (Dialogue) for five years. She is a member of the Nepal Journalists Federation, the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists, and the Society of Professional Journalists, Louisville, USA chapter. She has participated as a resource person in various training programs organized by the Nepal Press Institute, RDP Palpa, Worldview Nepal, etc.

Name: Thaís Aguilar
Title and Organization: Regional Director for Latin America, Servicio Especial para Noticias de la Mujer (SEM)
Circulation/audience: 30 media outlets in 15 countries in Latin America, North America, Asia and Europe; weekly service
City, Country: San José, Costa Rica
Profile: SEM is a feature and news wire service with a focus on gender issues that serves newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and websites in Latin America, North America, and Europe. Its mission is to improve and increase coverage of women's issues in the mainstream media. SEM produces about 100 yearly features on gender and development, politics, the economy, the environment, health, women, children, older people, and other topics. It has 25 Latin American correspondents. SEM was started in 1978 as a communications project of Inter Press Service with support UNESCO. Since 1990, it has been an independent international news agency covering the whole Latin American region. Representing SEM, Ms. Aguilar worked with 30 international journalists to produce the daily ICPD Watch at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, and reported on the ICPD+5 forum in The Hague for a network of Latin American journalists through an activity of the Population Reference Bureau's MEASURE Communication project. Ms. Aguilar regularly writes, edits, and publishes periodicals outside of SEM for other international meetings such as the Beijing Women's Conference. Ms. Aguilar also conducts gender training for journalists and journalism students, and training in media outreach for non-governmental organizations. Ms. Aguilar specializes in reporting on development and on women's advancement, as well as on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Some of her papers have included "El Aborto en el Mundo: Mitos y Realidad" ("Abortion in the World: Myths and Realities") and "Mitos, rumores y soluciones en torno a un problema de salud pública, una sociedad abortiva" ("Myths, rumors, and solutions to a public health problem — an abortive society"). She is involved with Political Agenda of Costa Rican Women, which lobbies policymakers to respond to the needs of women in all spheres of public life. One of this group's successes was the formulation of a new law on sterilization benefiting low-income women.

Name: Sarah Akrofi-Quarcoo
Title and Organization: Chief Editor, News and Current Affairs ("Ghana Radio News"), Ghana Broadcasting Corporation
Circulation/audience: Up to 9.6 million listeners (GBC also reaches Liberia, Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire)
City, Country: Accra, Ghana
Profile: Ghana Broadcasting Corporation is the largest radio station in Ghana, and it broadcasts 10 hours a day in English and in six local languages. Ms. Akrofi-Quarcoo is one of four editorial team leaders who edit and compile the day's hourly news and produce three weekly current affairs programs. She has covered social issues including health, population, and education, with a focus on women and children. Her work has been influenced by her association with local and international women's media groups, which strive to improve coverage of and the presentation of women in the media. She is president of Women in Broadcasting, an organization working in mainstream radio and TV news to advance the cause of women and children through advocacy, information dissemination, and training.

Name: Lemlem Bekele Woldemichael
Title and Organization: Senior Reporter, Radio Ethiopia
Circulation/audience: Radio Ethiopia reaches anywhere from 40 million to 60 million listeners a day. Programs are broadcast 158 hours a week in a variety of languages and reach many neighboring nations.
City, Country: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Profile: Ms. Bekele joined Radio Ethiopia in 1999, after working since 1994 at the Culture and Information Bureau of Ethiopia. In her work as a senior reporter for Radio Ethiopia, she strives to raise awareness about women's issues, especially rape, forced early marriage, and sexual abuse of children. As an Ethiopian woman, Ms. Bekele feels that the plight of women in her country is one that is too seldom ignored. She is especially concerned with the relationship between child prostitution and HIV/AIDS. Most of her reporting focuses on women's issues and the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in her country and region.

Name: Josefina (Pennie Azarcon) Dela Cruz
Title and Organization: Associate Editor, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Philippine Daily Inquirer
Circulation/audience: Sunday Inquirer: 223,000 copies, approximately five readers per copy, 1.1 million readers
City, Country: Manila, Philippines
Profile: The Philippine Daily Inquirer is the country's largest-circulation newspaper and considers itself a catalyst for social progress within the framework of a liberal democracy. Ms. Dela Cruz started writing about women's issues in the early 1980s, exploring topics such as women's images in the media, Filipino migrant workers, women and politics, sexual harassment, violence against women, and family planning. Ms. Dela Cruz belongs to two women's groups, Pilipina and ABANSE!, Pinay (Forward, Filipino Women!). She is a director of the local bureau of the worldwide-syndicated Women's Feature Service, which is based in India. She also teaches women and media courses at St. Scholastica's College in Manila.

Name: Judith Hadonou-Yovo
Title and Organization: Chargée de Mission, La Chaine 2 (LC2)
Circulation/audience: 24 hour broadcast with approximately 1 million viewers
City, Country: Cotonou, Benin
Profile: La Chaine 2 is the first private television station in Benin and in all of West Africa, and Ms. Hadonou has been with the station since its founding. It is the only station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, and viewers are invited to participate in live talk shows. Ms. Hadonou is responsible for program acquisitions, schedules, and production. She feels her participation in Women's Edition will allow her to explore more effective tools for improvements in programming directed towards women's development. Issues of special concern include HIV/AIDS, "vidomengons" (young women sent by their families to cities to work as servants in middle or upper class homes), maternal mortality, girls' education, and the status of widows. Ms. Hadonou is the most senior woman in a management position in Benin and is working to extend LC2's broadcast reach to all of West Africa.

Name: Eunice N. Mathu
Title and Organization: Publisher and Editor, Parents
Circulation/audience: 60,000 copies, 51 readers per copy; estimated 3.6 million readers; monthly
City, Country: Nairobi, Kenya
Profile: As founder and editor of Parents, Kenya's most popular magazine, Ms. Mathu aims to improve the quality of family life through objective, open, and honest coverage of issues affecting families. She has more than 20 years of experience in journalism. Prior to founding Parents, Ms. Mathu was a features writer with the Nation Newspapers of Kenya, coordinator of InterPress Women's Feature Service of Africa, and an editor of Consumer's Digest magazine. Parents is widely read in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and other parts of Africa. The most pressing issues that Ms. Mathu sees Kenyan women facing include the following: inequitable employment opportunities; lack of access to credit facilities; lack of a clear policies for women's health; AIDS; traditional practices such as female circumcision, polygamy, and wife inheritance; an education policy that denies schooling to many girls; limited access to affordable media and other sources of information; and low representation in the political system.

Name: Nawal Sayed Moustafa
Title and Organization: Vice-Chief Editor, Al Akhbar
Circulation/Audience: 750,000 copies, from 3 million to 3.75 million readers; daily
City/Country: Cairo, Egypt
Profile: An experienced non-fiction and fiction writer, Ms. Sayed Moustafa focuses on a variety of themes in her journalistic work. She was the recipient of the Egyptian Press Syndicate for the Press Dialogues prize in 1990 and the Moustafa and Aly Amin Prise for the Human Press Story in 1995. In 1983, she received a U.S. Press Grant and was one of 6 Egyptian journalists to visit television networks and newspapers in the U.S. On a foreign mission to Pakistan in 1990, she interviewed the prime minister, Banazir Bhutto. She was awarded the special honors at the Cairo International Book Fair by Egypt's President Mobarak for her most recent work of non-fiction. She is particularly concerned with the social and human challenges in her country, several of which include drug abuse among adolescents, native women married to foreigners, and female prisoners and the plight of their children. She also writes a weekly review in the literature page of Al Akhbar, in hopes of informing readers about important Egyptian, Arab, and international books. She has been working as a journalist for more than 20 years.

Name: Sathya Saran
Title and Organization: Editor, Femina
Circulation/audience: 160,000 copies, eight to nine readers per copy; 1.36 million estimated readers; fortnightly
City, Country: Bombay, India
Profile: Femina strives to "help women realize their full potential." While Femina is primarily a women's magazine that covers a range of themes, from social issues to fashion and beauty, a 1996-1997 readership survey found that 48 percent of readers were men. Femina's readers are educated professionals who are deeply interested in women's development. By taking the message of women's health equality to both sexes, Femina makes development ideas a priority. Ms. Saran identifies women's health, education of women in rural areas (only 15 percent of whom are literate), the pressure to bear male children, the increasing prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS, unwanted pregnancies as a manifestation of liberalized social norms, domestic violence, including rape and incest, children's welfare, and gender inequalities as priority issues in India that need to be addressed.