Women in Community Radio Congress

Amina Marix Evans, pioneer free radio producer, Amsterdam, NL
Amina's program, Love Supreme, was on a free radio in Amsterdam for decades, a broadcast for justice and truth. Among the subjects she has focused on are treatment of immigrants, the death penalty in the U.S., and the rights of women. She is also a book publisher and has printed (in 63 languages) a poem about Kerwin, a black youth who was beaten by skinheads and bled to death in Dam Square when a taxi refused to take him to a hospital.
EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF WOMEN IN COMMUNITY RADIO
In October 17th and 18th women journalists and community radio makers from France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Spain in will meet in Madrid at the first European Congress of Women in Community Radio to share experiences in gender and feminist programming and to reflect on the role of women within community media.
This congress is promoted by the women’s group of the Free and Community Radio Union of Madrid and co-organized by the Women Institute of Spain. It will have five main themes which pretend to visualize and empower the diversity of women’s voice:
Panel 1: Women’s right to communication: a skill for equity.
Panel 2: Gender politics and community radio legislation.
Panel 3: The political impact of women’s voice in community radios.
Panel 4: The radio: a skill for women’s empowerment.
Panel 5: The radio: a bridge of communication with the women of the world.

DATES: Friday 17th october 2008: Open Conference
Centro Cultural Conde Duque. C/ Conde Duque, 11
Saturday 18th october: Workshops only for women who work and have an active participation in community radios as well as women’s organizations. Hostal Persal, Plaza del Ángel, 12 Madrid, Spain

If you participate in a women’s specific radio program or in a women organization that make radio in Europe, we want to know about it. Please contact us to: nosotrasenelmundo@radiovallekas.org tel. (00 34) 91 777 33 24

WHY AN EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF COMMUNITY RADIOS?
Community radios history in Europe goes back to the first popular experiences of the workers radio clubs in Germany in 1921. Since then, the same right to create media for the citizenship persists for the need of freedom expression and participation of many social groups. I front of the monopolistic presence of big media enterprises and the partial ethical role they play, the right of communication of the society rises as a human right. It takes its base in the fundamental freedoms gathered by the majority of national constitutions of many countries and by various recommendations of the international organizations.

The paradox in the European Union is that, on one hand, exist different legal and legitimate forms of community radios where the States and some governments support and recognize the need of these community media created by civil society. On the other hand, are situations of “no law” (non specific law but is not prohibited) and administrative pressure on these media. These unequal circumstances must move us towards an European model of promotion of the community radios.
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While in Spain, the community radio actual situation stands in a “no law”, the “Equity Law” (one of the most advanced laws in Europe) was approved by the parliament (December 2004) and it confirmed the compromise of the government regarding women’s rights (mostly promoted by feminists an other women organizations) to transform sexist speeches and images in the mass media. This determination must be gathered into our women's communication projects to constitute a real non-sexist alternative in community media.