Gender and Media Advocacy Training Workshop for Central & Eastern Europe. Sljeme, Croatia. 26-28 January, 2006

B.a.B.e. (Be active. Be emancipated), a Croatian group advocating for women's human rights hosted the WACC regional Gender and Media Advocacy Training Workshop in Sljeme from January 26th – 28th, 2006.

It was the first of its kind for B.a.B.e. which joined the WACC Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in 2005. The workshop which brought together 14 participants from Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, Hungary, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, was an opportunity for activists to share experiences and gain skills in running professional, low cost gender and media advocacy campaigns.

Workshop participants shared their experiences of how women are represented in the media in Central and Eastern Europe, discussed the work of their respective organizations and exchanged ideas on how to redress gender imbalances in the media.

Participants identified the prevalence of discrimination against women, domestic violence against women and media portrayals of women as common issues prevalent in their respective countries.

Other concerns identified by participants included media ownership structures, the use of gender blind language, and the continuing production and reproduction of stereotyped roles for men and women in the educational system.

The workshop focused on understanding the media (its structures and functioning), strategies for developing and implementing advocacy campaigns to promote gender equality, and using the media to raise awareness on women’s issues and problems.

In 1996, B.a.b.e initiated a Women and Media programme and pioneered advocacy to enhance the visibility of women in the media in Croatia.

Following the workshop, B.a.B.e. launched Croatia’s Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media in March 2006. The campaign organized to mark the first anniversary of the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Day, was marked in Croatia by awareness-raising activities. These included presentation of the GMMP 2005 results; B.a.B.e.'s regional media project Eqviwa (Equally Visible Women), WACC's gender and media toolkit, and research on women's audience reception of gender representation in mainstream media in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro.

A report on the Media Legal Framework from Gender Perspective (for the Republic of Croatia) was also presented at the launch event which was attended by women journalists, researchers, politicians and representatives of the government as well as international donor organizations and foreign embassies.