27 Jun
Bangladesh needs more female journalists to promote gender equality in media
News Networ
k has been running a fellowship programme for over a decade to encourage young women to take up journalism as a profession and increase their number in media. It is one of the most successful and trend setting programme of News Network. Many of those fellows are now well placed in both print and electronic news media. The programme has been able to attract international organisations, donors and some foreign missions in Bangladesh. They were supported News Network to carry out the programme. But in recent fund crises the organisation fail to run the fellowship. As many as 300 women have been trained under this programme till 2015. About 60 percent of them are already working in the mainstream journalism.
But we have to go far away for achieving gender equality. Women journalists are about 6 percent among the total number of country’s journalists.
News Network further inspired after participating in First International Conference and General Assembly were held at ‘Palais des Nation’, Geneva in last year 6 to 10 December 2015.
News Network is dedicated and committed to continue the initiatives to achieve gender equality in media. So we look support from national and international organizations.
You can reach to me by email.
Shahiduzzaman, Editor and CEO, News Network
www.newsnetwork-bd.org
13 Jun
Bangladesh’s First Female Journalist, Nurjahan Begum No More
Nurjahan Begum, the first female journalist in Bangladesh and a trailblazer for female journalists in South Asia, has died on 23 May 2016. She was the editor of Begum magazine, the first magazine for women in the subcontinent, for the last 65 years. Ms Begum was dedicated to the magazine – editing it up until her death at 91.
Begum was Bangladesh’s first weekly magazine with pictures, and created opportunities for many female Muslim writers. The magazine was founded in 1947 by Ms Begum’s father, Nasir Uddin, who was also a journalist. It was first published from what was then Calcutta (now Kolkata) a month before India gained freedom from British rule, and shifted to Dhaka in 1950.
The magazine was hugely popular with Muslim women readers but also attracted the attention of men. It was even distributed to rural areas through the post.
There were few voices for women in 1947, and at that time women in our society didn’t dare to take their own photos. Begum brought major changes towards that attitude.
Ms Begum will be remembered for relentlessly pursuing women’s rights and focusing on their successes in every publication of Begum.
Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed profound shock at her death. In separate messages, they conveyed deep sympathy to the bereaved family members and prayed for eternal peace of the departed soul. BBC
Photos: SALMA AHMED