Women in News and Sport (WINS) initiative
The Women in News and Sport initiative (WINS) has been running since 2016, following an announcement by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, on 21 October 2016.
WINS is an innovative gender equality partnership between the Australian Government and ABC International Development.
Supported through the Australian aid program, the goal of the initiative is to increase opportunities for women in sports journalism in the Indo-Pacific region and through those opportunities increase stories about women in sport.
This initiative leverages existing Pacific and Asia Sports Partnerships programs by using them as a mechanism to find and highlight sports stories, particularly involving champions of women’s participation in sport at the community level.
Since it began, WINS has provided Indo-Pacific women journalists in PNG, Fiji, Vanuatu, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and India with the tools to carve out a career in the male-dominated world of sports media.
The program works in three areas:
- providing skills training and industry knowledge through an intensive workshop with Australian broadcasters and women sports journalists
- improving multi-platform content creation; and
- networking with other women sports journalists, media and sport organisations.
The WINS initiative creates economic opportunities for female journalists across the region, and uses sport and sports coverage to challenge community perceptions around what women are able to achieve.
In 2016-2017 there were 52 attendees across 4 workshops conducted in PNG, Fiji, Indonesia and Vietnam. In 2017-2018, there were 60 attendees across seven workshops conducted in Australia, India, Fiji, New Zealand, the Philippines and Vanuatu.
Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (right) launches the WINS program on a special edition of The Ticket (ABC News 24) alongside Rio gold-medal winning Australian Rugby 7s player Ellia Green (left) and Australia’s first indigenous Olympian beach volleyballer Taliqua Clancy (centre).
Video - WINS program panel discussion