In covering stories of women recruited through social media, news outlets often fetishise female terrorists and contribute to stereotypes of radicalised women as femme fatals or individuals who have struggled to integrate into Western culture. Research increasingly suggests they are educated and highly politicised women who seek power and a sense of agency over their lives.

What role does the media play in influencing the decisions female extremists make and how can journalists better cover the issue?

Chaired by Flora Bagenal senior reporter for the Women and Girls Hub by News Deeply.

Speakers:

Nikita Malik is a Senior Researcher at Quilliam, where she heads research on women, children, and families against radicalisation. Nikita has presented findings to EU and UK Parliament, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Department of State (DoS), and the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). She also heads Fempower”, a pioneering outreach program on gender extremism, providing training workshops to women in local communities, schools, and universities on the issues of honour based violence, forced marriage, FGM, and domestic abuse.

Fatima Zaman is currently delivering Prevent, part of the UK government’s counter terrorism strategy. She coordinates multi-agency efforts to prevent individuals from being drawn into
terrorism. She previously led ministerial policy work relating to counter terrorism. She is also a
global CVE Advocate at the Kofi Annan Foundation, working to counter extremism through peer-to-peer engagement.

Charlie Winter is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. He studies terrorism, insurgency and innovation, with a focus on online and offline strategic communication. He is pursuing a PhD in War Studies at King’s College London, examining the outreach efforts of the Islamic State in a comparative historical context. Winter regularly consults for governments and often appears in international broadcast and print media. He is an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

Edit Schlaffer is a social scientist, writer, activist and holds a PhD from the University of Vienna. In 2002 she founded Women without Borders, an international research-based NGO, encouraging women to take the lead in their personal and public lives. Her research and activities focus on women as agents of change and as driving forces to stabilize an insecure world.

Presented in partnership with News Deeply.

The Pearl of Africa tells the story of Cleopatra Kambugu, a 28 year old Ugandan transgender woman. Born biologically male, she is transitioning into the woman she knows she was born to be, in one of the most transphobic places in the world. Forced to leave her country and loving boyfriend behind, she sets out to fight for her right to love, and against all odds, to become the first accepted trans person in Uganda.

From her warm demeanour and disarming smile, you wouldn’t know how dangerous life is for Cleopatra Kambugu. After being outed on the front page of the biggest tabloid in Kampala, in a country with some of the world’s most bigoted anti-LGBT laws (including a notorious bill threatening life imprisonment for homosexuality), her relationship with long-term boyfriend Nelson is tested. Forced to flee to Kenya to escape reprisals, Cleo begins the process of navigating a difficult bureaucracy to reconcile with her partner.

The Pearl of Africa follows its main character as she seeks to shine light on the intricate concepts of gender and identity, bringing viewers into a Ugandan community whose existence has been shrouded in myth and prejudice. A moving and universal love story captured in the face of extreme circumstances, this unforgettable documentary urgently reveals the consequences of Uganda’s anti-LGBT laws.

Directed and produced by: Jonny von Wallström
Country: Sweden
Year: 2016
Runtime: 90′
www.roughstudios.com

There’s no getting round it. Female journalists face exceptional risks when reporting events across the world. Especially as freelancers undertaking assignments alone, women must factor the dangers of gender and sexual violence into their assessments of hostile environments.

L-r: Richard Spencer, Alison Baskerville, Elisa Lees Munoz, Nadine Marroushi and Caroline Neil

This was the resounding conclusion of News Reporting and Navigating Risk: Is Gender a Factor? – a panel discussion at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 23 June organised in partnership with the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

IWMF executive director and panel chair Elisa Lees Munoz opened the debate by presenting the results of the foundation’s recent survey of 1000 female journalists, of whom 20% had experienced some form of gender-based violence while on assignment.

“We were pretty horrified by that number,” said Lees Munoz. “But we were also pretty distressed by the fact that the majority of the perpetrators weren’t strangers… but were their colleagues, supervisors, fixers or translators.”

These risks can be difficult to mitigate against, said Caroline Neil, director of hostile environment training providers RPS Partnership.

“The risks that female media workers face are really intangible. The interpersonal relationship between you and your interpreter, fixer or male colleague who might have misconstrued the situation,” said Neil.

“It’s very difficult to mitigate those types of risks because it’s very much around your interpersonal skills, experience and whether you are susceptible.”

But the dangers to women journalists are by no means purely physical, said journalist Nadine Marroushi, who personally suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being assaulted by a crowd while reporting on protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

Psychological trauma resulting from sexual assault in the field continues to affect women long after the physical scars have healed. Yet PTSD can affect all journalists, regardless of gender, and is an issue the industry needs to urgently address, she added.

“It’s really important for journalists to acknowledge how things are affecting them and to create some kind of space where they can talk about those things,” said Marroushi.

That space just doesn’t exist at the moment, especially for local journalists who aren’t able to get out and get help, said documentary photographer and FFR board member Alison Baskerville.

“We can’t forget about local journalists. It feels like there’s this huge need for us to collaborate with all the knowledge that we have… so that we can educate ourselves and spread that further,” said Baskerville.

L-r: Elisa Lees Munoz, Nadine Marroushi and Caroline Neil

Richard Spencer, Middle East editor at The Telegraph, said that the culture towards mental health within media organisations is developing, with PTSD counselling now on offer for all who work with the paper. But many still fall through the gaps, he said.

“It’s difficult to see who takes responsibility for the longterm mental health of local hires such as translators, who may be working for fifty different places,” he said. “The policy is there, but the gaps for those who fall between them are very large.”

Excellent event @frontlineclub on the risks faced by women reporting in the field #journoselfcare – http://t.co/LucJzEmPCy

— Brian_Condon (@brian_condon) June 23, 2015

Chair Lees Munoz, who is helping to develop a call for international guidelines on hiring freelancers, told the Frontline Club audience that the IWMF is lobbying to include a clause for a no-tolerance policy on gender violence perpetrated by media employees.

She also stressed the need for international databases of trusted fixers and translators, global hostile environment training standards and for increased efforts to reach out to local journalists affected by sexual assault.

In 2012, the brutal gang rape on a Delhi bus of a 23-year-old medical student, who later died from her injuries, made international headlines and ignited protests. India’s Daughter is an impassioned plea for change and a tribute to a remarkable and inspiring young woman. The film explores the compelling human stories behind the incident and the political ramifications in India.

BAFTA winning filmmaker Leslee Udwin, herself a victim of rape, went to India inspired by the protests against sexual assault. With an all Indian crew, she got exclusive, first time on camera interviews with the rapists and defence attorney.

This month India’s government banned the film while the BBC moved their planned broadcast up by days and ignited a new controversy.

Following the screening we will be joined by director Leslee Udwin and others to discuss the international reactions to the film, the aftermath of the Indian broadcast ban, and the greater issue of gender based violence.

Yasmin Ali Bhai Brown is a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Observer, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Evening Standard, The Mail and other newspapers and is now a regular columnist on The Independent and London’s Evening Standard. She is also a radio and television broadcaster and author of several books exploring immigration, feminism, and race relations.

Directed by: Leslee Udwin
UK/India 2015
Runtime: 62 minutes

This screening is presented with the help of iProbono.
iProbono is a non-profit network connecting lawyers to civil society organisations and activists. The network’s global outreach enables the legal community to engage in projects from around the world and allows organisations to source assistance both locally and across jurisdictions.

As part of its free speech campaign in India, iProbono is representing Leslee Udwin and ‘India’s Daughter’.

From the taboo of premarital sex to trouble in the conjugal bed; from sexed-up writing to censored movies; from debates over sexual education and abortion to the incendiary topic of unwed motherhood; from the booming business of sex work to the struggles of those who break the heterosexual mould, El Feki examines the complexity of sexual intolerance and liberty in the Arab world and how it is entwined in religion, tradition, politics and economics.

Shereen El Feki is a writer, broadcaster, and academic who started her professional life in medical science before going on to become an award-winning journalist with The Economist and a presenter with Al Jazeera English. She is the former vice-chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, as well as a TED Global Fellow. She writes for a number of publications.

“Why do we need to give a girl a boy’s face to give her freedom?”

That is the question asked by Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament, who opted for a radical decision to raise one of her four daughters as a boy, having succumbed to the still prevailing social perceptions which dictate that until you bear a son you are a nobody. Taunted by family members and excluded by the wider society.

Tahir Qadiry’s short documentary The Trouble With Girls, produced for BBC Persian, looks at the long-standing but rarely discussed tradition of Bacha Posh – disguising girls as boys.

These girls are dressed as boys, given a masculine haircut and an appropriate name. They are sent to boys’ schools, allowed to play outside and generally are awarded all of the freedoms that girls and women are so often denied in the patriarchal Afghan society.

The mullahs appear to turn a blind eye to the practice and families seem to be contended with this state of collective suspended reality. So deeply entrenched is the desire to have a son that even a temporary optical illusion seems to soothe the tensions.

But what about the girls involved? Most of them have to stop being a boy when they reach puberty, although some parents continue raising them as such until they are fully grown adults. Some contributors, including a women’s rights activist, claimed that being raised as a boy increased their confidence and allowed them to become independent women with jobs and fulfilling lives.

However, The Trouble With Girls offers only glimpses of the psychological damage caused by this sort of an upbringing:

"If my parents force me to get married, I will compensate for the sorrows of Afghan women and beat my husband so badly that he will take me to court every day," says Elaha, who had lived as a boy for 20 years and only reverted to her own gender when she had to go to university.

There was a feeling that a lot was left unsaid and the audience at the screening certainly picked up on that. What emerged was an even more sinister story than the documentary itself implied:

 “This practice is still seen as a taboo and not many people want to talk about it. Having access to a family like that is very difficult. However, I was surspised how widespread it was" Qadiry noted.

“Many things we needed to leave out. The lady in the film [Azita Rafhat] is her husband’s second wife. He didn’t have a son with his first wife, so he married her. They only had four daughters, so he was planning to get rid of her and marry for the third time. That’s why she was forced to do this, otherwise her husband would leave her. She may be a breadwinner and educated, but she feels that, if she doesn’t have a husband her life will be a nightmare. And her daughter is the victim of that situation.”

The audience were keen to know how the author find this practice on a personal level:

“I found it quite disturbing. Giving girls all of the freedoms and then taking them away is very challenging. I asked my contributor – ‘don’t you think this is enough? Why don’t you fight with your husband about this?’ She said that was impossible, that is how things are in the Afghan society. You are more privileged if you have a son.”

However, despite all of the difficulties facing women in Afghanistan, it is not all doom and gloom. In the film we were able to see younger women escaping the shackles of traditional roles – they study, work and protest. Increasingly they are joined by men who understand that equality can only be good for the society as whole:

“The younger generations are changing,” says Qadiry, “they are on Facebook for example, Young Afghans for Change, they are saying that men and women are equal. They are taking steps to fight injustices, but it will take time.”

“They are saying that we have to give equal rights to men and women through our constitution, not though the creation of fake identities.”

However, some women in the film talked very positively about their experiences of being raised as boys.

Qadiry said that:

“Maybe they were not telling the full truth, they don’t want to tell you the negative side of it. They may worry you would make fun of them, or disapprove of their family.”

“A more liberal generation is on the rise, which raises their daughters differently, giving them all of the opportunities without pretending that they are boys. Those families exist in cities, and we need to understand that Afghanistan is not only Kabul or Herat, but many other provinces too.”