Primary Investigators: 

Lisa McLaughlin, Miami University; Susan Feiner, University of Southern Maine

Partnering Organizations: 

Chica Luna Productions; Making Contact/National Radio Project

Feminist media are essential to the process of framing and advancing women's economic and human rights.   They are the central actors in a small but vibrant  “feminist counter-public sphere,” where groups marginalized by gender offer interpretations of their identities, needs and  interests in opposition to mainstream representations of women’s place(s) in society.   Yet  the funding difficulties facing the feminist media sector are calling the viability of this role into question.   As participants and researchers of this counter-public sphere, we are concerned that the space for airing oppositional voices is shrinking.

Feminist media have not been subject to systematic research attention or organizing efforts as a sector.  Increasingly, however, their survival may require it.  Our project focuses on three closely connected questions in this context: 

• What are the relevant financial, structural, and production characteristics of the estimated 200+ feminist media organizations in the United States? 
• To what extent do these organizations collaborate in funding, advertising, audience outreach, media projects, and capacity building? 
• How do existing collaborations leverage women’s media organization (WMO) strengths; how could greater collaboration lead to enhanced financial sustainability; and what forms of funding collaboration are most likely to succeed in the WMO environment?

These questions cannot be answered without an effort to map WMOs: their size, geographic reach, funding (level and sources), and range of activities. We also need to know the sectoral distribution of these organizations; how many are for-profit, not-for-profit, public or private?  These basic information deficits are a barrier to bringing feminist media organizations together in pursuit of greater financial stability and sustainability. The primary objective of the project involves creating a forum in which WMOs can work collaboratively to build sustainable funding mechanisms for underwriting feminist media activities. This forum, the Women’s Media Equity Collaborative (WMEC), will begin with a research and outreach partnership designed to understand and address the severe underfunding of US WMOs.