CMFE20218M
El CMFE – Community Media Forum Europe recoge, en su boletín mensual dedicado a mujeres en medios comunitarios europeos, un breve artículo mío acerca de mi experiencia en la radio comunitaria de A Coruña Cuac FM. En este artículo (en inglés) abordo el reto de los medios de comunicación participativos para ampliar el número de mujeres en su base social y, especialmente, en sus espacios de decisión y liderazgo.
Podéis leer todo el boletín del CMFE en este enlace
Today’s story – leading up to our CMFE newsletter on March 15 – comes to us from Isabel Lema Blanco (CUAC FM, AMARC-Europe) and the Spanish Community Media Network: Community media are wonderful, experimenting learning communities – but we need more women to be really egalitarian, diverse and plural alternative media!
My beginnings in Community media are linked to CUAC FM, the Community Radio placed in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain). According to my experience, running a radio show allows young women to have a voice in the issues that matter. But Community Media is much more than radio, it is also an opportunity to be involved in social innovation processes that, in Spain, aiming to challenge and democratize the current media ecosystem, contributing to building a more plural and diverse media ecosystem.
Women’s movement and community media have always walked together. Our discourses are aligned, and Spanish community radios have coordinated relevant projects in the past to disseminate and visualize the important role of women in media.
In my personal experience, I have never noticed any difficulties or barriers to participating and taking a leadership role in our movement. But I realize that as any media, community radios are neither free of gender discrimination nor paternalism, and we still see a majority of males as leaders or spokespersons of the community projects.
I was the president of CUAC FM when I was 22 years old. It was a pleasant and unforgettable experience I feel very proud of. Community radios are spaces in which we build meaningful relations, make many friends and voluntary work is aligned with social and political goals, which is highly fulfilling. However, in my experience, institutional interaction is difficult sometimes, especially when you are a young woman. I felt that males sometimes patronized me or treated me with a certain paternalism, and I had to fight double to be taken into consideration.
I believe that things have changed in the last decade. However, there are still challenges facing related to gender issues in community media. Community radio stations make a particularly important effort so that women can construct their discourse and spread it through the media. I think community media are very accessible, but we must do even more to understand why there are groups of women who do not participate in community media.
What can be the causes? Maybe it is a matter of lack of media competence or maybe there are other perceived biases, such as spaces “dominated” by other social groups in which they perceive not to be welcome. In my experience, Community media are learning communities where to experiment, develop new abilities and feel empowered.
Women must have more presence in the alternative media system in order to be more egalitarian, diverse and plural.
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