On March 8, Women's Day is commemorated around the world. In Spain, after the overwhelming attendance at the protests of hundreds of thousands of people in 2018 and the massive union of journalists and communicators, society and some media have taken measures to guarantee that equality is applied to communication and, with it, , to the transmission of information and values to citizens.
Gender Correspondents such as that of the newspaper El País, sections dedicated to equality such as that of the EFE, or equality edits like those of eldiario.es and RTVE are some of the ways in which the media have reacted to their fundamental role of informing society.
The public media have also joined this need: Spanish Television and National Radio of Spain have had two Equality editors since last September. Alicia Gómez Montano is in charge of TVE and Paloma Zamorano of RNE.
They are two different departments: "We work in a way that each one focuses on its field, but we share many of the things that arise or that are asked of us," says Paloma. Alicia considers that something that prevents full coordination is that “physically we are 25 kilometers apart, as one is in Prado del Rey and the other is in Torrespaña. Each one is accountable to her directives, she to RNE, I to TVE Informative Services”.
The difference includes the scope of action of each one. While Zamorano covers all the programs of Radio Nacional de España, the edition of Televisión Española only acts in the Informative Services. Alicia Gómez Montano affirms that “we should cover all the programming, but for that we need more people. It is unbearable to supervise more than 100 hours of viewing and control of 5 television channels per day. It can be done, but for that you need to have a strategic vision and establish a team”.
FUNCTIONS
The Equality Edition on TVE, headed by Gómez Montano, has the task of making pieces to be broadcast on all channels (La1, La2, 24h, etc.): "I make pieces and content and I encourage other people to make them ", he assures. They also attend forecast meetings so that equality issues are extended to all areas, not just Society: "we want the gender perspective to enter the news. If in the area of Economy there are men and women who have a gender perspective are going to give importance to news that could previously go to waste, and that has to do with wage inequality, or precarious women… for example.”
Zamorano is in charge of Radio Nacional "both with the contents of programs and news items and with informing the Equality Observatory of the corporation of everything that is being done in support and visibility of women." Both publishers also have the mission of raising awareness among those who work in this company so that they know that progress must be made on an equal footing: “There are specific cases, for example, when trying to interview someone. If the press office always offers men, our task is for colleagues to request interviews with women so that they have visibility. It's hard for us, but we're getting it”.
Each audiovisual medium is different, and encounters its own difficulties. For Paloma Zamorano, "the [radio] news programs are easier to monitor because they have a very clear format where the interviews usually take place at a fixed time." However, with programs it is more difficult: “Radio programs are not like TV magazines. The radio program has both informative and social or cultural content. There we do see a very large increase in information about women, with women”. Zamorano considers that the radio “gives you the chance to hold gatherings with more women, to incorporate them without any problem. The TV exposes but the radio protects”.
The greater presence of women in social gatherings, both radio and television, has been one of the great claims to make women visible. The data provided by TVE ensure that an inequality that had been brewing since previous seasons is being corrected:
Alicia Gómez Montano recognizes that this trend is being corrected, and that it is one of the main points of the action strategy in this matter: “This is already beginning to be done unconsciously. Now when we see in certain reports that only men participate, we say 'this cannot be, we are going to call an expert woman'. We alone are not going to end inequality, but we can help bridge certain gaps as a public service.”
EQUALITY IN THE CORPORATION
Another of the great challenges of the equality editions of public broadcasting is to increase equality in the company itself. From RNE "We have given more visibility to women who work at home. More issues are being commissioned from women than I did beforeThey are almost always men," says Paloma. Upon reaching the position, women were mostly responsible for the production of programs: "from Monday to Friday three new information editors have been included, and that has balanced the balance because practically all the female presenters and editors concentrated on the weekend". On television, people have been encouraged to participate and propose topics and awareness of the use of inclusive language has begun. Alicia assures that "the strategy is to correct the 'honest errors' that occur. We want inclusive language to be used well and not fall into using splittings. The dictionary of the RAE gives us some exquisite possibilities".
Both TVE and RNE have launched training courses for all the services and employees of RTVE, "including the territorial centers, which sometimes seem like the 'little ones' that we care less about," adds Alicia, in addition to resources and manuals available on the company's Equality portal.
ALL FOR THE SAME
It's a portal in which everything that is being done in RTVE is compiled in terms of equality, both at the training level and the content of radio and television. It works as "an audiovisual library of RTVE content. In it you can find pieces such as the ones we did about the activist Angela Davis's visit to Madrid last October. We collect them all there, like a kind of portal of à la carte content," says Gómez Montano. Unlike on-demand television, where as content is added others disappear, in 'Todxs apari' they are maintained. By covering exclusive contents of Igualdad, they are not deleted, they are only updated.
The same happens with radio podcasts: since the creation of Radio5 Todo Noticias, the station has several programs specialized in women: "we have a program called Zero tolerance in which the theme of Gender Violence has been compiled. It is directed by Marta Gómez and has dealt with associations, groups, etc. It has been a natural thing for me to incorporate women's programs into the broadcast, such as No Gender of Doubt, They can, The Observer... ".
In addition, the portal includes a multitude of means such as manuals on language, wage gap and sexual diversity.
The publishers consider that it is better to promote equality that the contents on this matter are distributed throughout the grid. For Alicia Gómez Montano, "just as the gender perspective consists of applying the 50/50 ratio to everything, it is important that this is not concentrated in a single program," she declares. Paloma Zamorano believes that "the issues of equality interest people not only for these dates, but throughout the year." She advocates treating the same contents of the more specific programs in the morning, afternoon and evening magazines. "You reach more people if you diversify the offer, but if there is a space where all of them are collected, the better," says Gómez Montano.
None of the protagonists is clear about the future of the Equality Edition, but Gómez Montano believes that "the fight for equality must be, like the fight against the death penalty or slavery, a universal value that unites us all." Zamorano considers that the future lies in focusing on education for equality: "dAnd it is useless for us to have a lot of content on equality if our daughters and sons do not know that society has to be egalitarian. You have to work with schools and institutes. We are 50% of the world's population, that has to be reflected in everything."