Media Equity Collaborative addresses the needs of the severely under-resourced community of women centered media justice organizations and outlets. Today, over 350 organizations advocate, teach, produce or distribute women’s media in print, on the radio, in video and blogs.

MEC is committed to stimulating a network of communication and collaboration across this field of women-centered media and to establishing a new model of funding that strengthens the entire field, broadens collective reach and is sustainable.

MEC’s is working to expand the resources that support media work which honors our core principles without compromise—to racial and economic justice, grassroots political activism, women’s empowerment and human rights, and the evolution of a self-determined healthy environment and culture for all.

Preeta Shekar (left)

of Women’s Magazine, the radio show on KPFA/Berkeley, records

Cynthia Enloe’s

closing remarks at WAM/Women, Action and the Media, 2007.  Enloe, a writer and professor, serves on the Advisory Board of Center for New Words, and was the “audience” participant in the action workshop on Media Equity Collaborative.

 

Background / Process

In the Spring of 2007, Ariel Dougherty lead an action workshop at Women, Action and the Media conference on the need for a sustainable fund for women’s media. Eighteen participants --- representing the gambit from community radio to “an audience” member  ---  helped to carve out the beginning skeleton of Media Equity Collaborative. The core decision was to build the entire field up from existing programs and networks.

Euneika Rogers-Sipp

of Green Lady Media, was especially instrumental in focusing MEC’s early development prior to the Social Science Research Council grant.   There is, too, a long list of people consulted in the evolution of this process.  

Alyce Myatt, Amy Hoffman, Asha Tall, Barbara Seaman, Barbara Winslow, Becky Lentz, Carol Hanisch, Carol Jenkins, Catherine Russo, Christine Choy, Cindy Cooper, Cynthia Enloe, DeAnne Cuellar, Debra Zimmerman, Deedee Halleck, Dorothy Abbott, Elayne Clift, Euneika Rogers, Frieda Werden, Halina Bendkowski, Helen Brunner, Jan Strout, Jen Angel, Jennifer Baumgarden, Jennifer Hsu, Jennifer Pozner, Joan Braderman, Joan Shigakawa, Josh Breitbart, Judith Ezekiel, Karen Mulhauser, Karly Beaumont, Katherine Acey, Larry Kirkman, Laura Flanders, Lillian Jiménez, Lisa McLaughlin, Lisa Rudman, Loretta Ross, Lucinda Marshall, Marge May, Marion Banzhaf, Marjorie Fine, Maria Suárez, Martha Allen, Martha Richards, Martha Wallner, Marva Stark, Mary Ellen Capek, Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Pam Martens, Patricia White, Patricka Dallas, Peggy Law, Rita Henley Jensen, Sallie Bingham, Sheila Paige, Sonali Kolhatkar, Susan Feiner, Terry Lawler, Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Thank you, all!

             
Image from a flyer for Washington, DC screenings of International VIDEOLETTERS, a news & cultural exchange among 20 women’s media groups, 1975-1977, in 14 communities globally.