Honoring Birgitte Jallov

The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press is honoring Birgitte Jallov with one of the 2022 Women and Media Awards. She will be present at WIFP’s 50th Anniversary celebration, October 23rd, where all the winners of the 2022 Women and Media Awards will be announced. If you are not familiar with the outstanding work of Birgitte Jallov, please read about her media contributions.

Birgitte Jallov is the founding Director of EMPOWERHOUSE, an initiative to advance communities’ access to strong, sustainable community media, which Birgitte has worked to advance since the early 80s where she was a part of the budding community radio movement in her home country of Denmark. Since them Birgitte has worked systematically with documenting how community media can advance women’s voices, rights and empowered lives in more than 70 countries worldwide, based on which she is presently preparing a podcast series about ‘Women on the Global Community Airwaves’. This series will dig into what it is that distinguishes a community radio/media environment with significant women’s engagement and one without; and it will contribute to Birgitte’s ongoing work to identify strategies of empowerment to transform communication.

Having just stepped down as the chairwoman of ‘Community media forum Europe’ where Birgitte as the editor of the CMFE newsletter still pursues the Forum’s objectives of strengthening community media in Europe, Birgitte is a significant voice, securing space for and engagement of women in the sector. A former member of the international board of the International Association of Women in Radio and TV (IAWRT) and now lead member of several of the organization’s management committees, she has facilitated the development of the organization’s first strategic plan in recent times and heads the ‘Rural Women and the Media’ and the ‘Moldova Digital Safe House Committee’ – a one-stop-shop for women in the media, targeted by online – and off-line – harassment. 

Birgitte is the author of ‘EMPOWERMENT RADIO – voices building the community’ on how to build sustainable community radio, where the successor is on its way, focusing on community media’s role in advancing the many important aspects of human rights. An author of numerous policy publications, community media manuals, and articles on how to ensure community ownership of the media, Birgitte lectures in universities and trains community-based organizations. In her quest to ensure women’s space in the media – not least community media, she has initiated and designed impact assessment methodologies, in order to extract ways to secure empowered lives of women in and around the (community) media.