Final steps of the “Rewriting the story” project

Venice, 14-15 October 2024

The EU-funded project "Rewriting the story: Gender, Media and Politics" has been recently achieved with concrete results to challenge gender stereotypes in political coverage.   
In October 2024, two closing meetings took place in San Servolo Island (Venice), hosted by the Venice International University: the final workshop of the P2P program, coordinated by COPEAM all along the action, and the final conference, gathering the project consortium partners (IFJ – International Federation of Journalists, COPEAM and the University of Padua).

On day 1, participants made a general assessment of the overall peer-to-peer activity, from the mentoring process and dynamics to the analysis of key factors and obstacles encountered during the program. Each P2P beneficiary presented the concrete steps implemented, the goals attained, the facilitating or hindering elements, as well as the possible ways for ensuring the outcomes’ sustainability, after having set up – all along the process – priorities and appropriate measures to improve gender-inclusive narratives of women and men in politics within their organizations (Click here for more info).

The closing conference was the occasion for partners to share the project’s final results -  a collection of materials, training manual, monitoring tools and project-related initiatives openly accessible:

  • A free of use training toolkit on reporting politics through a gender lens
  • A pool of journalists trainers able to train their fellows across Europe and beyond in multiple languages and to deliver tailor-made coaching when needed 
  • Gender-responsible guidelines to report on politics
  • A group of over 300 journalists trained across Europe to provide, fair, unbiased gender representation in political coverage 
  • 400 students and future journalists and communicators from several EU member states trained on gender portrayal in politics.

"Rewriting the story” has been an intense and successful journey bringing together complementary actors united in a common goal: make the media sector fairer and more inclusive through concrete tools and strategies to break down barriers and gender stereotypes, both on screen and off screen. In addition to the tangible results listed above, this project has also favoured the birth of a professional community able to positively influence the working habits and environments of the participating organisations.