2023 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards now open!

Today on International Women’s Day (8^th March 2023), the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) and Zero Tolerance launch their national awards recognising excellence in reporting on violence against women and girls.

The Write to End Violence Against Women (WEVAW) Awards celebrate journalists and writers who bring stories of gender inequality and violence against women and girls to light in a responsible, accurate, and sensitive way.

There are five separate award categories open for submissions:

• News
• Feature
• Opinion and Comment
• Blog and Self Published
• Wooden Spoon

Submissions can be made for any article published for a UK audience since 1st October 2022.

Broadcast: Experts’ choice

This year, the organisations will also be awarding an experts’ choice award for excellence in broadcast journalism on violence against women – including television, radio, podcasts, and documentaries. This category is not open for public submissions, but will be selected by the violence against women and girls sector.

Zero Tolerance and EVAW are particularly interested in pieces which represent voices that are less often heard, for example Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse people; LGBT+ people; disabled people; people from rural communities; and/or people from working-class/diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

Submissions will open on Wednesday 8th March 2023 and close at midnight on Friday 30th September 2023. Submissions can be made here.

Men’s violence against women is pervasive and deeply entrenched in society, and both Zero Tolerance and EVAW believe the media has a crucial role to play in ending it.

• A woman is killed by a man every 3 days
• 2 women a week are killed by a partner, ex partner or close relative
• Almost 1 in 3 women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime
• Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse
• Just 1.6% of rapes reported to the police result in a charge or summons
• Black victims of domestic abuse are 1.5 times less likely to have charges brought than white victims

Andrea Simon, Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: 

“The media has a crucial role in tackling violence against women and girls. By raising awareness of abuse and its root causes, journalists have a hugely important role in shifting victim-blaming attitudes and beliefs that this violence is ‘normal’ or should be tolerated.

 Despite violence against women remaining firmly on the agenda, we’re still seeing a worrying amount of misleading and harmful media narratives that trivialise and excuse men’s violence against women, as well as racist tropes about which victims are seen as credible and deserving of our attention.

We’re encouraged to see slow but steady change in reporting on violence against women, and a huge amount of journalists doing excellent, vitally important work to shape our collective attitudes. That’s why we’re once again partnering with Zero Tolerance to highlight these examples of good practice and recognise the writers who are making a difference.”

Rachel Adamson, Zero Tolerance’s Co-Director, said: 

“Many news agencies, journalists, and editors continue to perpetuate myths and misconceptions when reporting on the violence and abuse women experience. Stories often use problematic framing and inconsiderate language, which normalises and accepts violence against women and girls.

The WEVAW awards raise awareness of these issues and celebrate the journalists whose reporting treats survivors with dignity, raises awareness, and ultimately takes us a step closer to ending this violence.”

CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE AN ARTICLE FOR AN AWARD

ENDS

Media contacts:

EVAW: Sinead Geoghegan, Communications Manager, sinead.geoghegan@evaw.org.uk, 07960 744 502

 Zero Tolerance: Lynne Wham, Communications Officer, info@zerotolerance.org.uk, 07826 558 090

Notes to editors

• Entry is free.
• Submissions are open to articles covering violence against women or gender equality published for a UK audience since 1 October 2022.
• For News and Feature categories, the author must have received financial compensation for the piece.
• News category: A “hard news” story, i.e. a piece of reporting intended to communicate the facts of the story.
• Feature: A lengthier feature piece, i.e. a piece of writing intended to provide more analysis and context than a straightforward news piece.
• Opinion and Comment: A piece where the author expresses their personal opinion.
• Blogs and Self Published Articles: The piece might include a post with the author’s own opinions, a review, or commentary on policy, research or world events. Nominations must be for an individual blog post, not an entire blog. However multiple individual posts from the same blog can be nominated as separate entries.
• More info on our categories here:https://www.zerotolerance.org.uk/work-awards/
• The nominated pieces are shortlisted by our steering group of activists and representatives from women’s organisations, and will be published in November 2022.
• Shortlisted articles are judged by a panel of industry experts and the winners are awarded at an online ceremony which takes place around the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence (25th November – 10th December).
• See our previous winners here https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/campaign/write-to-end-violence-against-women-awards/

About the End Violence Against Women Coalition

The End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) is a leading UK-wide coalition of over 120 specialist women’s support services, researchers, activists, survivors and NGOs working to end violence against women and girls in all its forms.

EVAW has long worked with the media to shape and improve reporting on violence against women and girls, having previously held annual media awards recognising those that have had a positive impact on public narratives. Information about our previous awards can be found here: https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/campaign/ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-media-awards/

About Zero Tolerance

Zero Tolerance is a Scottish charity working to end all forms of men’s violence against women by tackling the root cause of this violence: gender inequality.  Zero Tolerance offers a range of resources for journalists including media guidelines and  free stock images to illustrate articles dealing with violence against women.  https://www.zerotolerance.org.uk/