More women in Iraqi media

July 8, IMCK opened a starters' course in journalism for fifteen Kurdish female journalists in Sulaymaniya. IMCK wants to teach young, female Kurdish graduates the basics of civil and professional journalism in a post graduate training specially organized for them.

Media in Iraqi Kurdistan need more female journalists. They are needed to make the media more interesting for the big target group of women that are hardly reached now. Even though women make up the majority of all Iraqi's, they are hardly to be seen in the media.

News is mainly about politics, and if not, about subjects that are of interest to men. Women news in Iraq is often news about honour killings, violence against the family, the plight of widows - or perhaps about a famous singer. The fact that women play also a professional role hardly gets any attention. That political decisions also have effects for women, is neglected. Stories about business women or the career chances of young women are not found in the media. Nor are stories about taboo subjects, like arranged marriages and the difficult position of divorced women. To improve the position of women in Iraqi society and in their professional lives in the media industry, a change has to come. And as change comes mostly from the base, IMCK has set up this course with the purpose to get more women in the media.

The training will last for six weeks with a focus on different subjects. The training started with a week on news and basic journalism, and will be followed by a week on print-journalism, two weeks for TV-journalism, a week that covers Internet and the basics of infographics, and the final week is on general knowledge. The trainers for the first week on news and basic journalism are Khaled Suleiman and Ako Mohammed.

See for more pictures our Facebook. The workshop has been made possible by the German consulate in Erbil and Hero (Xan) Talabani, the wife of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.