A reading for the winter solstice: a look at the relationships between women and news in Kenya. South Africa, Mexico, Brazil. Hong Kong, Japan, UK, Finland, Germany, US, and South Korea
My report with @simgandi for https://t.co/UnpeR4BBwg." target="_blank">@risj_oxford
https://t.co/UnpeR4BBwg. Some thoughts below.

Men are more likely than women to say they are extremely interested or very interested in news. This is a tiny part of a bigger story.
Women talk about news with their friends, face to face.
Women are much more likely to get their news from TV
And just look at what is happening inside each of the countries. In Mexico, as @julianafregoso and Dr. María Elena Gutiérrez Rentería orgs like @Cimacnoticias are fighting to highlight the shocking levels of femicide other news orgs are ignoring.

https://t.co/R96wuInv6p
In the US, as @joyjenkins points out, @19thnews is putting women at the front and center of news
In Kenya, @VerahOkeyo talks about the fury over how women victims are portrayed, and the sheer levels of trolling female news anchors receive.
In Brazil @rodcarro writes of the nuanced role of women, who have managed to get some of the top jobs in journalism but still face a battle to shape the narrative
In Finland @jennikangas talks about how the country's main newspaper @hsfi has used data and lifestyle content to boost membership among both men and women
In Hong Kong's extraordinary year of news, Grace Leung and I talk about the #ProtestToo movement and why it matters to have women selecting images in news as well.
Ahran Park talks about why South Korean women in their twenties lave such low levels of trust in news, and how defamation laws stymie reporting on sexual assault, even as the #MeToo movement spread
A slew of women have taken top jobs in the UK media, including @khalafroula, @EmmaTuckerST and Victoria Newton, and @CaithlinMercer talks how new outlets like @galdemzine and @BlackBalladUK are pulling more women into the news ecosystem
@yasuomisawa @yasusawaENG in Japan points out how male dominated Japanese news still is, but some new initiatives, like Abema TV, are at least trying to bring in some change.
@ChrisRoper and @A_Strydom examine South Africa's paradox, of having a high number of female editors in chief in a country of huge gender inequalities.
@JuliaBehre and Sascha Holig in Germany look at how Instagram is drawing women into news, in a country where mainstream media talks a great deal about gender balance but rarely delivers it.

More from World

Watch the entire discussion if you have the time to do so. But if not, please make sure to watch Edhem Eldem summarizing ~150 years of democracy in Turkey in 6 minutes (starting on 57'). And if you can't watch it, fear not; I've transcribed it for you (as public service). Thread:


"Let me start by saying that I am a historian, I see dead people. But more seriously, I am constantly torn between the temptation to see patterns developing over time, and the fear of hasty generalizations and anachronistic comparisons. 1/n

"Nevertheless, the present situation forces me to explore the possible historical dimensions of the problem we're facing today. 2/n

"(...)I intend to go further back in time and widen the angle in order to focus on the confusion I  believe exists between the notions of 'state', 'government', and 'public institutions' in Turkey. 3/n

"In the summer of 1876, that's a historical quote, as Midhat Pasa was trying to draft a constitution, Edhem Pasa wrote to Saffet Pasa, and I quote in Turkish, 'Bize Konstitusyon degil enstitusyon lazim' ('It is not a constitution we need but institutions'). 4/n

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The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed