Equally Safe: Towards a Feminist Approach to the Safety of Journalists

"Violence against women journalists - as with all violence against women - does not occur in a vacuum; it is part and parcel of a systematic pattern of structural discrimination against women, which is grounded in negative gender stereotypes."

This report documents the results of research into what efforts women working in media have taken to make structural changes, tackle entrenched patterns of gender-based discrimination and violence, and enhance the safety of women journalists. The research takes an intersectional feminist approach and showcases creative solutions, designed by and for women journalists, that place their needs front and centre. These initiatives range from individual action to national organisations and grassroots networks. The report forms part of ARTICLE 19's project Equally Safe: Towards a Feminist Approach to the Safety of Journalists, which seeks to help civil society, journalists, researchers, and policymakers apply an intersectional feminist approach to their work.

As explained in the report, "While journalists and communicators worldwide experience threats, surveillance, attacks, arbitrary arrest, detention, enforced disappearances, and murder for carrying out their vital work, women journalists deal with additional, gendered threats, violence, abuse, and harassment - in their workplaces, when out reporting, and online. They bear the brunt of not only the increasingly hostile environment affecting all journalists but also pervasive gender-based violence, gendered discrimination, and 'gendered censorship'. These risks multiply for women journalists, who experience multiple, overlapping discriminations on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, gender identity/expression, and religious beliefs, among others."

According to the report, current policies and practices - even those deemed "gender-sensitive" - are failing to protect women journalists from these risks. This has led women journalists to take the situation into their own hands, creating solutions to keep themselves and their colleagues safe. These solutions are grounded in diverse feminist approaches that place women's everyday experiences, lived realities, and protection needs front and centre. In 2021, ARTICLE 19 set out to make these sometimes invisible practices more visible, building on the organisation's existing programmes on the safety of women journalists worldwide. They undertook original research globally and more specifically in six countries: three in Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and three in Latin America (Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay). Findings are drawn from the experiences, knowledge, and expertise of the individuals who were interviewed, and from two roundtables that took place in 2021. Some of the findings, particularly in relation to accountability, are also drawn from a combination of desk research and a legal analysis of international jurisprudence on the protection of journalists.

The research was guided by these questions: What might feminist approaches to the protection of journalists look like, and what benefits might they bring? Researchers took an intersectional feminist approach to framing the research questions and process. According to the report, "A feminist approach to journalists' safety goes hand in hand with a feminist methodology. Feminist methodologies provide new analytical frames for issues, making visible women's varied and rich lived experiences and recognising the effects of structural and intersectional inequalities. Such an approach goes beyond calling for gender-disaggregated data - although that is an important first step to identify why structural problems exist - and ensures an analysis of the underlying structures of violence as well as the opportunities such feminist insights bring."

At the same time, the project embraces the concept of "intersectionality", which recognises that women's lived experiences are shaped by interlocking structural factors that affect the discrimination and violence they may face. Taking an intersectional feminist approach means adopting a lens that allows one to see how journalists and commentators are placed at risk due to their race, class, sexual orientation, migrant status, age, disability, and/or indigenous or other status. As explained in the report, "Intersectional feminism is about not only the outcome but also the process. If the result we want is transformative equality and journalistic freedom, then intersectional feminism also asks hard questions about how we get there. An intersectional feminist approach also allows us to think of recommendations for change that are not only grounded in the realities of women's lives but also 'attentive to the micropolitics of context, subjectivity and struggle, as well as to the micropolitics of global economics and political systems and processes'. This feminist lens thus takes us beyond women journalists' individual experiences and draws out the systems that make women vulnerable to sexual harassment, violence, and/or discrimination."

The report explores the findings and lessons learned from the feminist practices uncovered in the research around three key themes. These insights are discussed and supported with quotes from interviewees, as well as case studies of initiatives implemented in the six countries included in the study.

• Women taking leadership over their own safety - The roundtables and interviews pointed to the importance of providing time and space for women journalists to contribute to, create, and implement their own safety mechanisms. It is vital to take women's lived realities and safety issues into account. One should, therefore, ensure that women become participants and leaders in the development of safety and protection protocols, specifically over how the safety mechanisms are crafted, and around giving consent to the implementation of any such mechanisms and protocols, given the effects they have on their personal, professional, and psychological experiences.
• Feminist solidarity practices - The findings highlight how feminist journalists and communicators from around the world have been working on protection and safety issues through the building of networks. This section showcases some examples of both long-standing and more recent networks that seek to develop women journalists' rights within media companies and to influence communications more generally on topics such as gender-based violence and gender stereotyping.
• Tackling impunity and seeking accountability - This section looks at how women have taken action to ensure the enactment of protocols and guidelines to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, to address women's safety issues, to make companies accountable to women journalists' online safety, and to use international standards as a tool to tackle impunity.

In the final chapter of the report, ARTICLE 19 summarises five key messages that emerged from across this investigation and uses them as a framework to suggest a set of five general recommendations and some examples for implementation under the safety of journalists and women's rights framework. ARTICLE 19 considers these messages to be key to continuing the debate about how feminist approaches can contribute to the safety of journalists.

1. All women's voices, experiences, needs, and human rights should be at the centre of the variety of actions state and non-state actors undertake on the safety of journalists. For example, to mention just one action listed, states should ensure that women journalists contribute and participate in the development and implementation of national legislation and public policy involving the safety of journalists.
2. All measures concerning the safety of journalists should be developed under the assumption that women's right to freedom of expression is key to ending structural discrimination, historical inequality, and unequal power relations, which exacerbate the risks women face in relation to their journalistic activities. For example: Media outlets, journalist-led initiatives, companies, and other non-State actors should put women's safety, integrity, and ability to seek and disseminate information at the centre of their actions and protocols aimed at protecting at-risk women journalists.
3. All stakeholders involved in the safety of journalists should reassess the lens through which the safety of journalists is analysed and therefore used to propose solutions to the different risks faced by women journalists. For example, states should assess their policies and programmes on gender equality and non-discrimination and ensure they respond to and include the different obstacles and risks women face in exercising their right to freedom of expression.
4. Strategies and policies on the safety of women journalists must consider the challenges and violence women face in their private and public spheres. For example, measures, policies, and projects aimed at monitoring and documenting attacks against women journalists should include sexual harassment and other forms of harassment that occur both in the workplace and in the course of their journalistic work.
5. Impunity for crimes against journalists should be addressed through strategies that consider the different manifestations of violence against women resulting from exercising their right to freedom of expression, along with the barriers women face in accessing justice. For example, states should identify and address the root causes of underreporting of crimes resulting from women's exercise of freedom of expression. They should tackle the general practices that diminish the seriousness of the attacks women journalists face and ensure they are not blamed for these attacks. Instead, authorities should develop measures that incentivise women journalists to report criminal behaviours committed against them in relation to their journalistic activities.