Women & Girls Lead Us Into Women's History Month

Women and Girls Lead kicks off Women’s History Month with a new website, an online film festival, and three high-profile events honoring International Women’s Day.

The Women and Girls Lead public media initiative is celebrating Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day in style with a whole new set of activities to engage audiences on multiple platforms. Today, Women and Girls Lead unveiled their new dynamic campaign website. Featuring an interactive video mosaic, the website offers an array of short video content including profiles of women in leadership roles in communities nationwide, and interviews with luminaries and leading scholars. "Women's History Month is an important time for public media to call attention to the important work of women and girl leaders worldwide,” said Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of CPB and Advisory Board Chair of Women and Girls Lead. “It is also a time for us to rise to the challenge to ensure that these stories reach audiences every day of the year. Women and Girls Lead offers an important model for public media to serve its mission in the 21st century.”

Women and Girls Lead Online Film Festival Women and Girls Lead kicks off Women’s History Month with the launch of its first Women and Girls Lead Online Film Festival on March 1, 2012. The festival will run through the month and will feature a collection of documentary films by prominent independent filmmakers showcasing extraordinary women and girls on the front lines of changing the world. Titles include Taking Root:The Vision of Wangari Maathai, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Shadya, and Women, War & Peace, among others. The film festival will be supported by key campaign partners who will co-present three interactive online social screening events every Wednesday of the month starting on March 14. International Women’s Day Events Alongside the online film festival, Women and Girls Lead will present three high-profile events with key partners in honor of International Women’s Day.

On Saturday, March 3 at 5 PM, Women’s International Perspective in partnership with Women and Girls Lead will present the Media as an Instrument for Change Symposium at Monterey Peninsula College in California.  The symposium will address the correlation between media, public policy, and gender inequality with an emphasis on the role of media in influencing the public’s perception of critical issues. Maria Hinojosa, host of Latino USA and Women and Girls Lead advisory board member, will deliver the keynote address. Panelists will include Caroline Heldman, associate professor of politics at Occidental College and co-author of Rethinking Madame President: Are We Ready for a Woman in the White House?; Elisa Munoz, deputy director of the International Women's Media Foundation; and Dina Eastwood, former television news anchor and ambassador for several nonprofit groups. Find more information on the event here.

Women and Girls Lead will also partner with CARE to present an International Women’s Day celebration and screening event on March 7, 2012 at 7:30 pm ET in Washington, D.C. The event will feature a screening of the critically acclaimed Pray the Devil Back to Hell, directed by Gini Reticker and part of the Women, War & Peace PBS mini-series. A post-screening panel on the role of women in changing the world will feature the film’s executive producer, Abigail E. Disney, Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, and Helene D. Gayle, president and CEO of CARE. The film screening and panel will be live-streamed online to allow viewers across the country to watch the acclaimed documentary and participate in the discussion. Find more information about the event here.

Also on March 7, Women and Girls Lead will sponsor an important panel at the Integrated Media Association (iMA) Conference in Austin, TX, titled Women Lead: Public Media in the 21st Century. Facilitated by Maria Hinojosa, the panel will look at how women are transforming the landscape of public media innovation, audience engagement, and new forms of storytelling. Presenting women as innovators and collaborators, the panel will examine how multiple stories told through both traditional and digital media can work in concert to illuminate issues, create sustained, global conversations, and invite the public to get involved. Find more information on the event here. To learn more about the Women and Girls Lead initiative, please click here.