This project is aimed at Capacity Building within leading broadcasting organizations in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing particularly on correcting serious gender imbalances and inequities in employment opportunities, female participation and media portrayal of women and girls in the region. The project is in line with The Beijing Platform for Action for Equality, Development and Peace, which places specific obligations on the media, both, in the way women participate and in how they are portrayed. Its overall aim is the achievement of the Beijing Declaration objectives, that require signatory nations and their citizens to ‘increase the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through the media and new technologies of communication’ and that demand that governments and other organisations, businesses and individuals alike to ‘promote a balanced and non-stereotyped portrayal of women in the media’.
 
The Project will build upon work already commenced by the project “Broadcasting for All: Focus on Gender”, a partnership involving the The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT). This partnership has produced a central Guidelines document and some associated materials for employers, practitioners, relevant organisations and communities to use to address this problem. The Guidelines and materials, including questionnaires and template action plans, are currently being piloted in the seven participating broadcasting organizations. With funding from this project the work would continue to: Conceptualize and adapt the Guidelines, survey tools and action plans by the seven targeted organizations; Train their representatives broadcasting organizations in the use of the Guidelines and tools; Support the Implementation of the gender policy and gender neutral production and monitor success against pre-established benchmark measures.
 
It is intended to deliver the scheme to at least 18 key broadcasting organizations over a three-year period, commencing in 2012 with the seven organizations targeted by this project proposal. Progress will be continuously monitored and it is hoped that measurable improvements in gender equitable employment, work practices and portrayal will be securely embedded and largely self-sustaining in at least 15 participating organizations following completion of this project.