“I can fix that!”
That’s how naive I was when I started Informed Opinions 13 years ago. A month-long study of The Globe and Mail’s op ed pages had revealed that women’s perspectives made up less than a quarter of those published. And 40% were penned by one columnist with a discouragingly narrow view of humanity.
Writing op eds is a teachable skill. Canadian women are as educated and insightful as men. How hard could it be to bridge the gap?
Indeed, since 2010, thousands of the women we’ve trained have gone on to add value to dozens of influential publications (including the Globe, The Toronto Star, La Presse…) across the country.
As a result, many have positioned themselves as thought leaders in their fields, been recruited to new jobs, and appointed to prestigious panels, boards and the Senate!
But that wasn’t enough. The road to the victory Informed Opinions is seeking – gender parity in public discourse – is paved with serious speed bumps. So we have repeatedly pivoted:
– When we realized how reluctant many women were to accept media interviews or speaking requests, we developed new workshops.
– When we noticed that journalists were still defaulting to the usual white male sources despite the ubiquity of highly qualified, diverse women, we created an experts database to make them easier to find.
– We also partnered with scientists at Simon Fraser University to develop the Gender Gap Tracker to incentivize improvement. It measures and makes public how well (or poorly) news outlets perform in featuring women’s perspectives.
– When we heard from Black, brown, Indigenous, disabled and LGBTQ+ experts how increasingly brutal online abuse had become, we launched our #ToxicHush initiative to draw attention to its silencing impact, especially on under-represented voices.
– And when our data revealed that 60% of the most frequently quoted news sources are politicians – and we discovered that Canada is lagging behind 60 other countries for gender parity in politics – we pivoted again.
Our new Balance of Power campaign reminds Canadians: Representation is fundamental to democracy and many other countries have made achieving gender parity more of a priority.
These strategic shifts have required Informed Opinions to grow from a small project into an organization with full-time staff, an experienced board, and dozens of partners across the country.
They’ve also fuelled measurable impact and helped to attract funding from government, private foundations and individual supporters.
So if you believe, as they do, that women’s amplified voices are essential to solving the persistent social, economic and environmental challenges we face, please consider joining them in donating to Informed Opinions.
A tax receipt, our deep gratitude and increased impact will follow. https://lnkd.in/g_i3AjAf
