Portal launched to increase presence of women in media

Ljubljana – A portal called Ona Ve (She Knows) was launched on Monday to increase the share of women appearing in Slovenian media and at public events. Half of Slovenia’s population are women but they feature in only 24% of media appearances, Marta Kos, the chair of the association behind the portal, said upon the launch in Ljubljana.

“It’s largely men who comment for us on developments in Slovenia and the world, so such a ratio is not good for our society,” said Kos, a former journalist and former ambassador to Germany and Switzerland.

The other reason for establishing the portal onave.si is to encourage women to become bolder to appear in public, having established they are much more critical of themselves then men, she added.

The portal features more than 110 women experts which media outlets or event organisers can contact when looking for experts to appear on their shows to have more gender balanced line-ups.

Nataša Pirc Musar, a lawyer, former journalist and ex-Information Commissioner, said that from now on no media outlet or event organiser could say they “could not find a women expert”.

Modelled on a similar association in Switzerland, Kos founded the Association for Connecting Women Experts and the Promotion of Knowledge in June and now set up the portal together with several like-minded women.

“Our vision is for the ratio of women and men in the media and at public events to reach 50:50,” said Kos, adding that a medium-term goal was 40:60.

Journalist Nataša Briški said that a media monitoring between 1 April and 15 July showed women appeared in 24% of the interviews in the monitored media outlets. Such monitoring would be carried out once a year.

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