Why Women Count
Why Women Count is a series of 41 five minute programmes. They were made by broadcasters and producers in 41 countries focusing on the theme of empowerment. The short documentaries were produced by the Broadcasting for Change Network, a unique group of international broadcasters and producers founded by tve in 1995, and committed to producing and airing programmes on women’s rights and equality worldwide.
Widows fighting to overturn stigmatization in Nepal, women standing up to give evidence against genocidaires in Rwanda, generations of women running the Breakfast Shed business in Trinidad & Tobago; MP Njoki Ndung’u’s struggle to get her bill outlawing Sexual Offence through Kenya’s parliament; journalist Lydia Cacho’s determination to expose government-sanctioned paedophilia in Mexico, textile worker Biljana Smileva’s fight against sweat-shop exploitation in Macedonia – just some of the stories featured in this groundbreaking series.
The 41 short films in the Why Women Count series coordinated by tve explore women’s empowerment – what it means in the lives of ordinary women and men, and the role it plays in the political, economic and social development of countries, communities and families worldwide. Clips from four of the films were screened at the opening ceremony of eighth Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting (8WAMM) which was opened by Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on June 11th, 2007.
“The message then was the message now,” said the Rt. Hon. Don McKinnon, Commonwealth Secretary General in the address he made to the 1,000 strong audience after the screening, “and it’s the message of that excellent film which we have just seen. It’s this – ‘women count’. Count them up, and you reach three billion – half the people on this planet. Dis-count them, and you reach the state we’re in, where half of the people on this planet bear considerably more than half of its problems.”
The five minute documentaries in the series were produced by The Broadcasting for Change Network, a unique group of international broadcasters and producers founded by tve in 1995, and committed to producing and airing programmes on women’s rights and equality worldwide. Since then the Network has collaborated on the production, exchange and broadcast of five series of programmes exploring the status and condition of women in different parts of the world. In 2006 the Network grew to 41 countries, with the addition of eleven new participants from Austria, Bosnia Herzegovina, France, Ghana, Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, Rwanda, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine.
Full information about each film with transcripts available on the Broadcasting for Change website.