March 5, 2001


 

Women's Feature Service

  • The only international women's news/features syndicate, Women's Feature Service produces crisply-written features and opinions on development from a gender perspective. WFS has a global outlook, with writers from 40 countries and media clients all over the world. The articles brought out by WFS are published by small and large newspapers, magazines, journals and newsletters across the globe. WFS' wide range of clients ensures penetration at the grassroots, in small towns as well as metropolises, providing a wide coverage of issues and dissemination of information.

  • As of April 2001, WFS has launched its own website, which can be viewed at www.wfsnews.org. WFS features are also used by several websites.

  • WFS articles are also useful as reference material for researchers, academics and specialist publications. With archives going back 10 years, WFS has a rich collection of articles that can help trace developments and trends.

  • WFS is upgrading its photo bank with the objective of offering this as an independent service.

  • As part of the NGO community, WFS frequently collaborates with other organisations. Recent examples include contributions to initiatives such as Best Practices Surveys, a report on 'The World and Its Peoples', strategies to bridge the digital divide, preparation of a gender-sensitive media tool kit, and so on. WFS is on the Executive Committee of Women Action, an international network of women's groups.

  • WFS is headquartered in New Delhi, India, and is staffed by an all-women team.

History

WFS began in 1978 as an UNESCO-UNFPA initiative to create "Women's Feature Services" with the specific purpose of impacting mainstream media. With funding from UNFPA, for a five- year period, UNESCO contracted five news agencies for this work designed to be controlled and operated by women within existing news agencies. From 1978 to 1983 UNESCO played a major role in supporting the feature services both programmatically and financially.

Today, of the five women's feature services initiated, the Inter Press Service exists as also the WFS connected to it. WFS has been a completely independent organisation since 1991 and is now headquartered in New Delhi, India.

 

WFS has been among the first to report on:

  • The growing power of the Taliban in Afghanistan

  • The effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union on women

  • AIDS and its impact on women and sexuality.

  • WFS was the first to report how Parlodel, the breastmilk suppressant, had generic side effects.In the same year, WFS wrote about Intissar Al-Wazir, the first woman in Palestinian government.

  • 'Men Oppose Wife Abuse' described one of the first initiatives by men, in India, to campaign against domestic violence. A Bombay-based journalist placed an advertisement in a daily: Wanted: Men who believe wives are not for battering.

  • WFS coordinated a series of investigative reports of child labour in different countries, as well as a series describing successful attempts to rehabilitate child labour in India.

  • WFS initiated a series of studied features on maternal mortality and the drive to ensure safe motherhood in different countries -- Peru, Zambia, Bangladesh and Jordan -- representing different regions.

  • WFS correspondent won an award to investigate female foeticide in India.

  • WFS focuses on civil society organisations contribution to constructive change.


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