The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has launched its annual Women Make the News (WMN) initiative in conjunction with International Women's Day (March 8).

WMN is a global initiative aimed at promoting gender equality in the media. The theme of this year’s initiative, "Towards Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media: Best practices for gender perspective in media and in media content," is intended to launch a global exchange on the importance of and need for gender sensitive indicators for media organizations.

UNESCO is inviting members of media organizations, professional associations, journalists' unions and individual men and women working in the media field to use this platform to share opinions on indicators that should be used to measure gender sensitivity in the media and why those indicators are important. Additionally, respondents are encouraged to share the methods in which they personally address gender sensitivity in media and media content.

Contributions should be submitted by March 30.  All submissions that are received will contribute to UNESCO’s development of gender sensitive indicators to be used by media organizations and civil society. These submissions will also be featured on the "Women Make the News 2010" Web site.

Additionally, UNESCO is inviting editors of newspapers, radio, and television to produce special supplements and programs on the topic of gender sensitivity indicators. Also, editors are encouraged to entrust women journalists and reporters with editorial responsibility for the newsroom for a limited period of time over the duration of the WMN campaign. Participants will receive WMN pins.

For more information or to make a submission, click here.