The NWMI was born on January 30, 2002 at the end of a three-day national workshop on / for Indian women in journalism held at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Approximately 100 women journalists participated in the workshop, including approximately 60 from 16 places in 14 states. Among the participants were journalists working in at least a dozen languages.

Organised by Voices, a Bangalore-based development communications NGO, with inputs from women journalists across the country and support from Unesco, the national workshop took place at the end of a network-building process that began more than a year earlier.

The process was sparked off by a series of three regional workshops held in 2000-2001 (two supported by the World Association for Christian Communication and one by the Freedom Forum) that enabled women journalists from different parts of India to gather together to discuss issues of common concern and to explore the possibility of building professional networks at the local, state, regional and national levels.

The first of these workshops, held in Bangalore in November 2000, brought together 40 participants representing five states and six languages from the south and west of the country. The second one, held in Jaipur in April 2001, had the participation of 50 women journalists from seven states in northern and eastern India, working in six languages. The third workshop, held in Shillong in September 2001, brought together about 20 women from seven states in the east and northeast regions, working in five languages.

There was broad consensus among workshop participants on the need for multi-layered, informal networks of women journalists that could serve multiple purposes, both professional and societal. Apart from the obvious purpose of providing a forum for addressing issues related to the workplace, it was felt that such networks could facilitate career advancement through training and professional enrichment programmes, as well as mentoring.

In addition, participants suggested that platforms of this kind could help highlight ethical issues related to the media, as well as the vital role of the media in society, especially in a democratic and diverse country like India. The network-building process was catalysed by the book, Women in Journalism: Making News (Ammu Joseph, The Media Foundation / Konark Publishers, New Delhi, 2000).

The need to follow up on the issues raised by women journalists during interviews for the book, and the perceptible desire for some form of professional association among a wide range of female mediapersons, comprised the initial motivation for and primary objective of the workshops. In the wake of the regional workshops, women journalists began getting together at the local and, in some cases, state levels to address common issues and interests and to take forward the process of network-building. In places where such groups were already in existence, the process provided the possibility of establishing links with mediawomen in other parts of the country.

The national workshop enabled participants to share these experiences and discuss the proposed national network. At the end of three days of spirited and, often, heated debate, decisions were taken that obviously had the concurrence of most, if not all, the participants. It was decided that the NWMI would strive to function as an informal, non-hierarchical organisation linked up with independent local collectives through coordinators (one for each centre where local groups exist, with the understanding that more centres and coordinators would join in due course) and a core group of five persons representing the five regions (northeast, east, south, west and north).

This arrangement would be reviewed periodically and further decisions on the structure, mode of functioning, etc., would be based on the experiences of the interim period. Groups in different centres would determine their own agendas on the basis of the local context, priorities and needs. At present, the NWMI has coordinators in the following places: Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Bengal (Kolkata), Bihar (Patna), Delhi, Goa, Gujarat (Ahmedabad), Jharkhand (Ranchi), Karnataka (Bangalore), Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune), the north-east (where the coordinator for the region is based in Manipur), and Orissa (Bhubaneshwar). Groups in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are still in the making.

It was also decided that the network would work with existing professional bodies, where possible and necessary, to fulfil the above aims and objectives.


More about the first national workshop for women in journalism