متوفر باللغة العربية أيضاً
Bi Kurdî jî peyda dibe
Soulnar Mohammad
Translated by: Roksana Atte
(Qamishli, 23 July 2022)
Nextep Organization held its first dialogue session within the Dialogue Portal project in partnership with the French NVNV organization. The session held at the organization’s headquarters in Qamishli city was titled “Safe Working Environments for Women in Northeast Syria” and had attended by journalists, civil society activists, and rights workers.
The session began by narrating the reality of women working in media and civil society organizations in Northeast Syria and the challenges they face in their work. There was agreement on the absence of a women-sensitive safe environment in most workplaces and that there is wage discrimination between women and men. Furthermore, women are underrepresented in managerial positions, if any, then they are usually cosmetic roles, according to the participants.
In the second sub-session, participants discussed women-sensitive policies and safety standards for women workers in media and civil society organizations in Northeast Syria. In this context, views differed; a group of participants saw that most civil society organizations and media foundations pay no attention to women’s specificity, particularly the physiological ones, and that women are not given adequate leave during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and childbirth. Another group mentioned that some media foundations and civil society organizations have recently attempted to develop conduct regulations and policies sensitive to women’s specificity.
In the second sub-session, participants discussed women-sensitive policies and safety standards for women workers in media and civil society in Northeast Syria. In this context, views differed; a group of participants saw that most civil society organizations and media foundations pay no attention to women’s specificity, particularly the physiological ones, and that women are not given adequate leave during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and childbirth. Another group mentioned that some media foundations and civil society organizations have recently attempted to develop conduct regulations and policies sensitive to women’s specificity.
The session facilitator presented the results of a survey conducted by the Nextep team, which targeted 101 women journalists and civil society activists across Northeast Syria. The results clarified the challenges of their work in media foundations and civil society organizations.
The session concluded with several suggestions and solutions provided by the participants: the promulgation of a law obligating media foundations to grant women their leave entitlements that are relevant to their physiological specificity, especially maternity leaves, and to ensure that they are applied, operationalized the principle of oversight and accountability in local institutions and raise the legal awareness of women to defend their rights, as well as the need to put conduct regulations and editorial policies that are supportive of women.
Through the Dialogue Portal project in partnership with the French NVNV Organization, Nextep organization holds a series of dialogue sessions to address different societal issues and to reach outputs that contribute to analyzing and solving these issues.