WOMEN BYLINES

"The bird doesn’t sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song."

WOMEN BYLINES is a first-time series of quality journalism and storytelling workshops from women and girls in partnership with local, national and global media. We give a voice to voiceless women everywhere.

“In our post-Covid world, and the threats it poses to women specifically, the Women Bylines Workshops Series cover the global #metoo” movement. We follow the struggles, creations and challenges of women worldwide as they confront the world’s most pressing issues. Through intimate first-person narratives, we explore the root causes of gender and racial inequity everywhere and visit current affairs through the prism of women’s rights and social justice.”

Pilot Irak - Women’s Voices Within.

Password: WVW

France

Say Yes and Do No
By Hanane Guendil, documentary filmmaker and journalist

When Hanane, 27, raised in Algeria moves to France, she meets women who are able to make bold choices but who still pay a heavy price for their freedom.

Ref:Refinery29

Letter to Louise Michel
By Florine Constant and Louise Pluyaud, film director and freelance journalist

Louise was named after Louise Michel — feminist, anarchist, teacher from the 19th century — the only woman in France with a metro station named after her. Two-hundred years later, Louise writes her a letter about what feminism looks like today.

Ref:Refinery29

But I Never Said Yes
By Delphine Dhilly, documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist

An intimate film about young women who, like Delphine herself, experienced a sexual intercourse they didn’t desire. Not quite rape, definitely not love, Delphine looks at the fears that stop young women from speaking their minds.

Ref:Refinery29

The Fairest of Them All
By Olivia Gay, documentary photographer

When Olivia was 15, her mother, an aspiring model, left the family. Olivia started taking photographs of all the women her mother refused to identify with. Three decades of portraying prostitutes, nuns, lonely mothers and inmates later, Olivia finds a way to free herself.

Ref:Refinery29

Sleepless Nights
By Charlotte Pouch and Fabienne, director and camera operator

For six years, Charlotte tries to support her friend Fabienne, mother of three girls, one of the 220,000 yearly victims of domestic violence in France. After years of suffering, the two friends come together to make this intimate film, as Fabienne decides to break free from her perpetrator and husband.

Ref:Refinery29

La Maison des Femmes by Alice Gayraud

When I speak of the Paris suburb Saint-Denis, what do you think of? The band NTM. The number 93. Gang rapes. The Stade de France. Metro line 13, packed in the morning. The RER B1. Police violence. The market. The basilica. No-Go zone. The kings of France, as well. I think each person has quite a specific image in their mind of this stigmatized community to the north of Paris. The rate of poverty there is rising to 30% and that of unemployment follows closely at 20%. For me, SaintDenis was another world. One located 35 metro stations away from my reality. Far, very far from me. And then, overnight, it became my reality.

Ref:Gucci

The Abuse Epidemic Hiding in Idyllic French Towns Is Flat-Out Frightening by Laurène Daycard

CHIME FOR CHANGE Every three days In France, a woman is killed by her husband or ex-husband. Miscellaneous news articles are published in the media. Flashy headlines but little content as the press rarely investigates the nature of these violent acts. Over the course of almost a year, the French reporter Laurène Daycard have been looking back on the life of one of the 123 women that disappeared in 2016. By telling Géraldine Sohier’s story, killed on October 12, 2016 by her ex-husband, Laurène Daycard wanted to give a face and a voice to the many victims of femicide in France.

Ref:Gucci

Mexico

Pilot

People Like Carmen by Maya Goded

Brought up in a politically committed family, as a child, Maya was encouraged to develop her social consciousness and to keep an eye open for the unbeaten paths in life. Today, she has spent more than 30 years taking photographs of the women Mexico would rather not see nor show. Her journey starts when she becomes pregnant. To confront her fear of having her life taken over by her baby, she decides to find unconventional women who are about to become mothers as well. This is how she meets Carmen, a prostitute, who becomes Maya’s friend and subject over the years. Carmen is also Maya’s first step in her in-depth journey exploring lives on the sidewalks of Mexico.

Steady Paths by Laura Hernandez

Laura is a professional therapist and communication major who specializes in gender violence. Her role is to help victims recover from abusive relationships and rebuild their self-esteem.

When she herself started experiencing domestic violence, Laura had a difficult time accepting it. Yet she couldn’t help but recognize that she was experiencing the different stages her patients had been describing to her. Here, she tells her story and interviews four other women whose accounts seem shockingly like her own: most perpetrators are partners and husbands, men who once promised to love you.

There Is No Why by Hazel Zamora

Hazel was six years old when a wave of femicides swept the town of Juarez. Girls and young women between the ages of 15 through 25 were being raped and murdered. Now 25, and a young journalist, Hazel is assigned the killing of young women as a beat. She introduces us to the family of some of the girls who have been murdered recently in senseless acts of violence and amidst a frightening sense of impunity. To seek justice and truth, relatives are left alone, often re-victimized by the cynicism and casualness of the authorities for whom these young women’s lives hold no value. Hazel shares her emotions as she realizes that the victims are girls just like her.

The Protest by Veronica Munoz

Every member in Veronica’s family has been ill since anyone can remember. Today she herself has multiple infections, and her two sons are also suffering from chronic bronchitis and other pulmonary diseases.

Veronica is from Pachuca, a region known for its silver mining activities.

But the dust left by the extraction has been making people very sick for decades without anyone protesting the powerful interest of multinationals involved in the industry. Veronica has also experienced sexual violence, including rape when she was 15 years old. Here, she draws a parallel between the violence that women confront in Mexico and the violation of life-sustaining natural resources. Veronica argues that it is the same profound disrespect towards life that allows both types of abuses to exist and continue.