Media Storm - ARCHIVE Women in crisis: Is conflict and disaster sexist?

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Support us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Keir Starmer announced earlier this year that he would reduce the aid budget to 0.3% of national income, from 0.5%, to fund increased spending on defence. But according to the government’s own impact assessment, Labour’s deep aid cuts will hit children’s education and reduce spending in women’s health. Why are women worse affected by aid cuts? Because crisis is sexist. When disaster strikes, women are 14 times more likely to die than men. In Gaza, UN analysis showed close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children. But women are also underrepresented in decision-making about how aid is distributed, and so the solutions rarely reflect this. In this episode recorded 2023, Media Storm partnered with the International Rescue Committee to platform the lived experience of women in disaster zones— not just as victims, but as leaders of solutions. The IRC makes a conscious effort to place women at the centre of emergency responses, and has connected us with pioneers in Yemen, Pakistan and the world’s biggest refugee camp: Kakuma, in Kenya. We also hear voices from Afghanistan, Nigeria and North American indigenous communities, who reveal how conflict and climate change disproportionately impact women and girls. We were then joined in the studio by actress and Amnesty ambassador Nazanin Boniadi, to look at how a male-dominated mainstream media and Eurocentric headlines can hide the realities facing women of the world. We look at the unique case of Iran, where women have revolted following the state murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022, and the press’ crucial role in fighting for human rights for everybody. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi Media Stormers, it's Helena here. As we mentioned last episode, we're on a summer break now for a few weeks, but there are still going to be Media Storm episodes released. An archive episode, a special interview and a special investigation. This week, we're revisiting an episode from series three, recorded in the summer of 2023. This episode is about women and women. and girls in crisis zones, how they are disproportionately impacted by disaster,

and how responses fail to address this. The British Prime Minister Sekeir Stama has announced what he says amounts to the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. The money for the uplift will come from the international aid budget, which will be cut from 0.5 to 0.3% of national income. Kier Stama announced earlier this year that he would reduce the aid budget to fund increased spending on defence. But according to the government's own impact assessment, Labor's deep aid cuts will hit children's education and increase the risk of disease and death in some African countries.

The report specifically said spending is reduced in women's health, health systems strengthening and health emergency response. Do you see the problem? If budgets are tightening, then maybe we can understand why certain aid that only caters to women, i.e. half a population, for example, sexual and reproductive health services, would be the first to go, as opposed to universal support like food and shelter. Who's to say women's needs are more important than collective needs? Except there's a flaw in that logic. It assumes everyone starts from the same position of need

that there's a collective-based standard. But humanitarian crises, while they often bring very specific dangers to men, disproportionately impact women and girls by some incredibly severe metrics. The UN Development Programme has found that when disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely to do. died than men. As an example of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 70% were women. Women's clothing could make it harder for them to escape. Women may have fewer coping mechanisms for survival, such as bank accounts or education. They may have less

independent in making life-saving decisions due to culture or religion. Then there's reproductive health needs, and heightened gender-based and sexual violence, like forced marriage. These discrepancies are particularly stark right now in Gaza. Oxfam analysis found more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades. At the end of 2024, UN analysis showed close to 70% of verified. victims over a six-month period were women and children. Many women lack privacy in the overcrowded refugee camps and face serious difficulties

accessing basic supplies and healthcare. Psychological and economic violence are common, but physical and sexual violence has also been reported. Without targeted gender-based emergency responses, women's rights are not just stagnating. They're actually getting worse. Women, especially women from impacted communities, are underrepresented in the humanitarian sector at high up decision-making levels. But in this episode, we hear from those trying to change that. Women leading solutions in the crisis-struck regions of Yemen, Pakistan and the world's biggest refugee camp, Kenya's Kakuma.

They came to media storm via the International Rescue Committee, or the IRC, which is trying to, raise awareness of the gendered impacts of crises. And this is exactly what Media Storm is all about. Having lived experience of an injustice or a trauma or a vulnerability doesn't just make you a case study. It makes you an expert. Before we dive in, just some date checks. At the time of recording, Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, ruling a Conservative government. And also, you'll hear us talking about the recent case of Masa Amini's death, which happened in September 2022. That comes in the second half of the episode, where Matilda and I sit down with Nazanin Baniadi, who joined us for some media analysis of conflict and disaster. Nazanin is an actress and an

Amnesty International Ambassador. For now, we'll leave you with this from the Media Storm Archives. women in crisis is conflict and disaster sexist. There's fury in the aid sector over the cuts. Our world is in hot water, massive floods, record heat, forest fires, burning out of control. We are back with the latest on the situation in Sudan, which is embroiled in a violent power struggle. Do you know how many Russians your team have killed? Real men in combat. Where are the women?

Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Malinson and I'm Helen O'Owurya. This week's investigation. Women in crisis is conflict and disaster sexist. First, we take you to Yemen, 2015. Civil war has just broken out after Houthi forces stormed the capital and ultimately seized the presidential palace.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, a young doctor called Wauld Afara is a just gotten pregnant. For me, to be a mother, it was like a dream. But unfortunately, it was a very difficult time. I was always worried about my safety and the safety of my baby. Many clashes were around my home. I remember one day I was in the third floor at my home. Suddenly, I found myself on the ground floor. The sounds of the clash were very high. I didn't know rule. I didn't know I moved that far downstep. Ah, al-hmm, my baby's now eight years old. We are good, al-h-h-a-l-h-l-h-a.

Dr. Wahudafara took her trauma and made her trade. A year after the birth of her first child, four years after graduating from medical school, she joined the IRC, a global humanitarian aid NGO, as a reproductive health officer working in Aden City. And that's where she's calling us now, which is why you might hear the call to prayer in the background. We have to consider about women and girls

who are often the most vulnerable members of the community in the crisis soon. Many women have been unable to access health care, as many hospitals have been closed, and many people have been born with health problems. When we take care for a pregnant woman, that means we save the backbone of the children, the family. If she is in a good health situation, that means he will be able to take care for their children, who will be a role in decision-making in the community.

Wode entered this line of work to aid what she saw as an underserved community, a community served primarily by its own. Most reproductive health services are providing by midwife and female medical staff. We have to continue our work because if we are not held, them, who will help them? Who will help them? This is the story we are telling today. Women as their own saviors, heroines of disaster. I have been work with IRC for over eight years. I have seen firsthand the impact on their work on women and girl.

I have met women who has been able to take care for her children after experiencing complicated delivery. I have seen children who have been able to go to school and get education. I have also seen communities that have been able to recover from conflict. I'm proud to work with IRC and continue to help people in need to make a positive difference. So I'm based in Islamabad, but right now I'm in Karate. I'm on a field mission. Next up is Shabnan Balak, the IRC's country director in Pakistan. Since 2002, the country has been shaken by deadly floods that have killed thousands of people and caused trillions of rupees worth of damage.

The floods were caused by extreme monsoons and glacier melts, both of which are linked to climate change. Thousands of villages turned into a lake, into a man-made lake. You could only see the rooftop of those houses. and the families typically refuse to move to the relief camps. So what men were doing, they either swim or use boards to go outside for two days or three days to get something to eat. But these women were living on these rooftops, no electricity for many months, no drinking water, no food, no protection. They had no say, actually, whether they want to live in this condition or they can actually move to the relief camps where the assistance

was available. They have no say in terms of if they are going to displaced, where they're going to live. It's always men who decide. We have heard about the intersectional impact of climate injustice and gender inequality previously on Media Storm. Our investigation into big oil during season two took us into the Niger Delta, where communities devastated by oil spills are taking Shell to court. Here, we met a woman called Esther Katty. I'm a midwife. A midwife from the Agali community,

she has been delivering babies since 1989. And she wanted to talk to me about the impact of spilled oil on women and reproductive health. Most of the women, they are suffering. There is a lot of problem, bleeding, and there is a lot of barreness. There is a lot of sickness in the body. When the oil is not flowing in organ,

there is no sickness. But this time, the farm we are planting, everything we are eating is not good. I cannot count the number of women they have delivered children that I just deliver them. So not of them born and die. They are many like that. But it is not just environmental damage that brings harm to women. The infrastructure, manpower and economy of climate destruction has given rise to lawlessness and corruption in many fronts. line regions. King Ogpabi of the Agali community told me how soldiers dispatched to man the oil

pipelines had rendered the roads unsafe for women. Soldiers who are guiding the pipeline, we harass our women who are going to found. And Rachel Heaton, an indigenous activist I met from Seattle in the U.S., described how oil pipelines being developed through her community's sacred lands have coincided with significant rises in rape, femicide, and the disappearance of thousands of indigenous women. So when these pipelines go through our communities, they build these man camps, and these are just trailers that are set up in the middle of nowhere. It contributes to the issue of MMIW, which is missing and murdered indigenous women. There is an epidemic of thousands and thousands and thousands

of women go missing as a result of the fossil fuel industry. The numbers are astronomical. and they're not reported by the police. Back to Shabnam in Pakistan. Shabnam, talk us through how humanitarian crises like you've seen in Pakistan can have a gendered impact. The gender-based violence is multiplied. Since men are under tremendous trauma, it is easier for them to take out their frustration on the women who are living with them.

Another part of it is in the patriarchal society, they are confined manly in their homes. they become very vulnerable. It is very easy to exploit them. And does it affect girls as well as women? Tremendously. Tremendously. Since family is under huge financial burden,

it's easier for them to marry off the young girls, to have one lace mouth to feed. And we have witnessed a lot of such cases. Shabnam's account reminds me of a story we've heard before during season one of Media Storm, the story of two Afghan sisters, Sonia and Atier, who were separated across borders in lieu of the UK's troubled Afghan resettlement scheme.

You know, she's saying the reason that I don't want to go out of my room, I'm scared that the people that I've been sold to them, they find me. But you didn't hear the full story back then. The reason Sonia came to the UK in the first place is because, because she was sold in marriage to an older man. She was pulled out of school when she was just a child and married off at the age of 14. Her husband then took her to the UK. The memory haunts her as her sister flees the same fate.

I remember when he came to engage, he kissed me. I was kind of scared. What type of kiss is that? My mom sometimes kissed me in my cheeks and stuff, but what is this kiss? Okay, I don't want it anymore, but I've been forced. And I was just 14. I had to die and accept what they're doing to me. And now my sister is like that.

During the 2021 Taliban offensive, Sonia's younger sister Atier was promised to a wealthy older man and supporter of the insurgent group at the age of 15. She said to me, they sold me. and I will kill myself on the wedding day. The conflict has brought hardship on many families and more and more have married off young girls for a price. It has also seen the erasure of women and girls from public life, along with many of their fragile rights.

The UK government recently cut almost 6 million pounds in funding for a program in Afghanistan that was supporting vulnerable women and girls. Many aid organizations withdrew their funding to Afghanistan, harming the most vulnerable part of Afghanistan's population. The problem Shabnam tells me is that when it comes to emergency responses, these gender-based issues are not generally seen as a priority. Quite often, GPV, gender-based violence is not seen as immediate life-saving assistant.

And then the woman needs and their protection is not prioritized by the decision-makers. Who is making these decisions and how are the people? they making these decisions? They are from our donor community, governments from the member states, for example. Most of them are men. And due to access constraints, they really don't have much access to the affected communities. So they talk to the government in Pakistan and together they decide where to invest in what are the needs. These are political decisions. Many women are not registered voters even. They don't have political say. So they listen to men more. They invest in them more. However, it could be a potential opportunity for them to invest in women

who can contribute in the rebuilding of the community and country. But this is a missed opportunity. How is it for you working as a woman in aid when, as you described, the decisions are mostly being made by men? Did you face barriers entering the field and address? advancing so high up it in the first place. So I belong to a community where unequal gender norms are common. Girls are denied opportunities. No matter, they have huge appetite to contribute.

Then I joined the development aid sector two decades back. I was only one woman in the room full of, you know, 100 men. Since last 20 years, when I am into this sector, things have improved a lot. Recently, in the 2020 flurs, this was the first time when we were talking about the menstrual rights and menstrual hygiene during the floods. But still, I would say, there's a long way to go because when it comes through decision-making and in the leadership role, people still think that it is a tough job. It will break women.

Women cannot take such burden. The next stop on our journey is Kenya, where the world's largest refugee camp, Kakuma, houses a quarter of a million refugees. Now over 30 years old, the camp has suffered the short-term news cycle. Recent years have seen severe cuts to aid, partly due to the COVID pandemic tightening national budgets. When we need to prioritise our limited resources, sticking rigidly to spending 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid

is difficult to justify to the British people. The UK reduced its international aid commitment. from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5% in 2020, the only G7 nation to do so. In Somalia, the cuts mean the foreign office will delay or potentially stop altogether a program to prevent female genital mutilation there. Africa was hit the hardest by these cuts. And across Africa, cutting aid for women's sexual health will mean around 185,000 more women face unsafe abortion. and around 1,500 more women will die in pregnancy, according to this Foreign Office document.

And when budgets and crisis zones are cut, the first services to suffer are those deemed non-essential. Food and shelter, essential. Reproductive healthcare and gender-based aid, not so much. This year in 2023, there was a reduction in about approximately 20% of our budgets, despite the fact that the humanitarian crisis is getting worse here, the numbers are continuing to increase the need is getting more. So we've felt it quite neutrally. This is Dr. Cila-Monte, the IRC's health manager in Kakuma.

She oversees one hospital, one health centre, and five dispensaries, manages 70 to 80 staff, along with budgets, fundraising, and patient-facing clinical work, all while taking evening classes, for her public health MA. You work with refugee communities. In what ways does displacement, specifically, disproportionately impact women and girls? In transit, they are exposed to different risks, such as sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. They arrive to the camp generally needing medical attention for pregnancy or for sexually transmitted illnesses

and care for injuries from being beaten up. by either their spouses during transit because it's usually a high-stress situation or even by the communities that they encountered during their fleeing. At the camp, they are forced to immediately become the primary caregivers for the children and elderly, looking for work in order to gain financial resources, sometimes trading sex for services, for security and for money. But women usually are not free to live. make decisions on how to utilize the resources that they seek. So you'll find that despite them

being in the camp and being the head of a household, they have to seek male approval. This poses a risk to their health because they don't have the free rein over their health as other women experience. One of the biggest health problems you encounter in Kakuma is food insecurity, and I've read that even this disproportionately impacts women. Can you explain why that is? Because one of the social norms or cultural norms that is around here is that men eat fast. Whatever is left is now what is eaten by the women. And whenever women now get their potion, they have to prioritize the children. So women are disproportionately more food and secure.

This is what you usually encountered at the hospital. Crisis are catalysts to the frailties already threatening our social fabric. And gender is only one example of how this plays out. But these IRC women doing their best to counter this tell me gender must also be at the forefront of solutions. Refugees that we receive, sometimes they cannot accept services by a male for one reason or another, whether it's religious or cultural.

So I believe it is very important to have females in leadership roles because that is the only chance of reaching them. Women and girls are profoundly affected by emergencies, particularly when it comes to gender-based violence, the restriction of sexual and reproductive health services, and limited decision-making power and survival resources. Yet news coverage of conflict and disaster is often profoundly male-dominated. That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to the studio and to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. Our guest this week is an Iranian-born Screen Actors Guild and award-winning actress and renowned activist.

You might know her from the Lord of the Rings series, Homeland, How I Met Your Mother or Hotel Mumbai. Since 2008, she has represented Amnesty International's campaigns for the restoration of stolen human rights. She has published opinion pieces across global media outlets from the New York Times to the BBC, spoken at the UN, the US capital, the UK Parliament, and has been one of People magazine's 25 women changing the world. We're so lucky to be joined by Nazanin Fonniadi. Welcome to Media Storm. Thank you so much for having me. Over the past year, Nazanin, you've used your platform to keep the world's eyes on Iran after women's rights activists rose up against the state murder.

of Masa Amini. Masa Amini was a 22-year-old woman who died after being detained by the country's so-called Morality Police, September of last year. Nazanin, can you first just tell us a bit about your personal background and why this fight is so close to you? Of course. I was born basically just a few months after the Islamic Revolution of 17.9. So my parents were dissidents against the newly reforming Islamic Republic. And their lives were at risk. They tried to escape once when my mother was seven or eight months pregnant with me. And my father was summoned over the PA system at the airport to the Revolutionary Court.

Of course, the fate back then, anybody who was summoned would have been the firing squad. And so understanding that they had to leave, they basically found a way to escape to London when I was 20 days old. And, yeah, I grew up in London, but that sort of revolutionary fervour was always in my psyche. And I knew I had to use my freedoms to protect those of the people I left behind. And, you know, I always joke that my first protest was in my mother's room because she would be one of those brave women on the front lines, the same women that we're seeing today bravely defy the Islamic Republic. Thank you so much for sharing that story with us.

What we do want to do is paint a picture of some of the problems that we've seen, particularly on today's topic, which is women and girls in crisis zones. Disaster, in particular, conflict-related disaster is often considered a male topic in journalism. It deals predominantly with male politicians and male soldiers as well, and male correspondents are typically reporting it. Women are often not interviewed or mentioned at all. Let's actually paint you a picture. So the journalist and academic Eva Bola analyzed TV reports throughout the 2011 Libyan War from the BBC's News at 10, the ARD in Germany and TF1 in France. Let's start with the correspondence, i.e. the on-screen journalists themselves. None of the seven German correspondents were women. One of the nine French correspondents were women. And seven out of 20, 29 BBC correspondents were women.

Then you have to look at the actual people being interviewed. Only 10% of voices were women. There were over 100 reports in which all the voices were men and none in which all the voices were women. Now, reporters will often justify this absence by saying, well, most of the key decision makers and public figures in those countries are men. Or they may say something like,

it's difficult to talk to women for various kinds. cultural reasons. I want it as in how you would respond to that. What do you think that they are missing by not seeking out those female perspectives? First of all, those statistics are shocking, aren't they? If you seek out those voices, understanding full well that sometimes in the case of Katayon Royahi, for example, when she gave an interview to a foreign outlet, without her compulsory hijab, just days after the murdering custody of Massa Amini, she was then charged. And so she puts herself at risk by speaking to a foreign journalist.

And that is the harsh reality of it. That being said, there are people who are willing on the ground. In addition to that, there are so many dissidents who have found refuge in Western countries or in democracies, who are willing to speak. please seek them out. And I think an added layer to this is the fact that we're not providing safe havens to these dissidents who can be the voice of the people. So if we want access to the voices, the real voices of the people, that we have to afford them the opportunities to live freely and comfortably and have safe havens in our countries and our democratic countries and not give

those same opportunities to their oppressors. Yeah, it's so true what you say, they are there and we need to seek them out. And I was really interested when reading the research, Helena just shared that statistically female correspondents were more likely to include female voices in their reports. So the women are there. It's just that men historically have been less likely to seek them out. But hopefully that's changing, particularly with what we've seen in Iran.

Yes, I hope so. Yeah. And I think one of the areas where this disparity is particularly true is not just in war, but in displacement. And our news is generally Eurocentric, right? Meaning that when we do cover displacement, we cover it through the lens of people coming to our countries, people crossing our borders.

And these groups are often male-dominated for a combination of security or cultural or economic factors, while women are actually more likely to be displaced in their home countries, or impoverished neighbouring regions. And I wonder if this fixating on the very immediate part of the refugee crisis conceals the vast reality beyond. I think it's interesting because a few years ago,

I volunteered for Care for Calais in Northern France, and I made a short documentary called Stateless. And the main objective there was to sort of humanise the people I'm campaigning for to see them in that condition, in those conditions. families who developed skin conditions because they had literally just trekked hundreds of miles to some kind of safety and security. We have to understand that these human beings don't put themselves and their families through these things unless they were in real danger, unless they'd given up all hope.

And I think when we're talking about the immediate struggle of the refugee crisis, and how people are trying to get to the UK or elsewhere, we diminish the experience that what they'd gone through before that point and we don't have a broader picture and a perspective. Gosh, Nazan, I actually worked in the camps in northern France for a few years, and that's the reason I went into journalism. And one of the things that really, really struck me

at the time of the Iranian protest was how the Western media would really heroise the women in Iran and the struggle that they were facing in their home country. But at the same time, and with no awareness of the irony involved, demonize refugees, including Iranian refugees, coming across borders in search of sanctuary. I mean, in the UK, specifically, we have a lot of headlines demonizing so-called channel migrants. And among these people crossing the dinghies,

Iranians are one of the most represented populations. So, yes, the media can be hugely Eurocentric and that really obscures our understanding of humanitarian crises in a global context. Let's talk specifically about the language in the media that often presents women, as you say, in such a two-dimensional way. How do we feel, for example, about the phrase women and children? So I'm just going to read a few examples from headlines over the past few months. we have from Reuters in July, at least 87 buried in Sudan mass graves, including women, children. African news in May, 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed into attacks by suspected jihadists. I mean, especially there, but we've established these as civilians.

Why do we need to separate women from civilians and to group women and children together as if they have the same level of vulnerability? Can you shine any light on that? Do you have a view? I think it's really important to contextualize the use of these words. So while it might seem odd, I think, for Westerners to understand why those groups might be more vulnerable. I think in countries like Iran, they absolutely are because, look, Iran or Islamic Republic is one of the only states in the world that still detains and executes children, where child labor and child marriage are legal, where school girls just were recently gassed. to stop them from dissenting and preventing them getting an education. Women and girls have been systematically persecuted, segregated, harassed for 44 years.

So I think it's a responsible way of reporting with regards to countries where women and children have been stripped of their rights. And they're not more vulnerable because of who they are. They are more vulnerable because of what the state has done to them. That's the impact of language. But there is also an impact when certain images are, used in the news and images can tell us a lot. In conflict reporting, men are typically shown on screen as spokespeople, as we've discussed, while women kind of are sat silently in the background.

If we look again at that analysis of the Libyan War, we mentioned earlier, as shown on the UK, France and Germany's main news channels, the most telling metric was the footage, so the imagery actually used to tell the story. And most of it showed. male rebels on cars with weapons, shooting, they were often captured from a lower angle, making them seem sort of heroic in stature. And the majority of the footage featured not a single woman. Yeah, I guess there were no women in the Libyan War. Right. And where women do appear, it's often as this prototypical victim, mourning mothers of soldiers, refugee mothers holding a baby. So we'd like to ask you, Nazan, about how you as an actor have been visually presented

on screen. And we were wondering when ethnicity, nationality or religion has been a part of your character, has it been represented accurately? Or has it ever fallen into the stereotypical Western tropes of Iranian or Muslim women? Oh, that's an excellent question. I definitely there have been tropes and stereotypes, you know, that I've faced. But I've always sort of tried very hard to choose roles that don't really subscribe to those tropes and stereotypes as much. Now, times have changed. This sort of idea of being tokenized or completely having your ethnicity erased is something that has been very prevalent in our industry, particularly for Mina, I met Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian actors, where you're either just a girl called

Sarah, who happens to look like me, and there's no reference to your ethnicity, so your ethnicity and your identity are completely erased from the screen, or if you do play a sort of a Middle Eastern or a Muslim person, you tend to sort of fit into these tropes and stereotypes or be tokenised. And I think that has improved. But we had to start somewhere. And I think that's where my experience over the past 17 years that I've been acting has seen sort of a shift and a growth in our industry headed hopefully in the right direction of understanding the nuance of what we're portraying on screen

and hopefully learned from what we did in the past and improved it. There's a fine line of making something authentic and not stereotypical. You also need people who are Middle Eastern, who are South Asian, to be behind the cameras and to be writing the scripts and to be directing the TV programs, not just in the forward-facing on-screen roles, because otherwise the authenticity is never going to arise in the end. That's right. That's a very good point.

I think we absolutely need these marginalised voices behind the scenes as well. That's where the stories are being created. So yes, absolutely. Time now to look at a recent story that's dominated our headlines in recent memory. and a new cycle in which you Nazanin were particularly involved, the Women's Revolution in Iran. Protest broke out last September following, as mentioned, the death of the 22-year-old Masa Amini,

and our news was dominated by powerful images of women removing their headscarves and cutting their hair in rejection of the regime's coercive, gender-based policing. I know we've touched on it, but we want to start with what was good about how this story was covered. To me, it felt like one of the first, first times we've seen women being presented as leaders of something rather than of victims in times of crisis. Let's just talk a little bit more about if there's any praise for how

this story was reported internationally, Nazanin. I feel very hopeful that the right voices for the most part were being centred. The protest slogan, the battle cry, woman, life, freedom has really, I think, caught the hearts and the imaginations of people across the world in a similar way that the anti-apartheid movement did in South Africa. We've had Hollywood come on board. We've had so many lawmakers take this on and become sort of part of the fight with the Iranian people. And that, I think, has been in large part because of the media coverage. We can't impact change without the media. And again, I will juxtapose it to 1979, where essentially Ayatollah Khomeini's propaganda was regurgitated by Western media. And this man was seen to be

some kind of a Gandhi figure. And look at the state that that put us in, that we showed such deference and reverence for this guy. And we had no idea what he was capable of. And to see that deference now be shown to the women of Iran, the very women that for generations now have been oppressed and brutalized by that man and by his regime, I think has been the greatest victory for the Iranian people. Of course, we need much more than that, but it's a great style. You know what I would love to get your thoughts on is, well, there was a lot of cause for praise

with how the international press responded to this situation. There's always room for improvement. And in one case, many outlets, including the New York Times, the BBC, spread the false and misleading story that the Iranian government had disbanded the morality police. This was falsified by particularly women in Iran who said, look, this is propaganda from an Iranian official. I wonder whether, you know, you would consider this lazy reporting, maybe a reflection of a lack of sources on the ground, or lack of local knowledge, or maybe something a little more pointed, because there was definitely criticism

from some Muslim women that the uprising was being used by Western media to push an anti-Islamic narrative that demonised the hijab, I mean, particularly in countries like France, where there's a lot of debate around the hijab. I think you can be a champion of both. If you believe in women's rights, if you believe in female autonomy and human autonomy, then we have to be able to able to champion the women of Iran and understand that that is not inciting Islamophobia to say that they have the right to choose what to put on their head and their bodies and also protect the rights of the women who choose to veil in France. Those two are not mutually exclusive. Anyone who believes in human rights and women's rights will fight for both. I think it's extremely

dangerous to say that the fight that the women of Iran have been in for the past year, and their brothers and fathers and husbands and sons have joined them in is inciting Islamophobia. That is extreme. And in fact, I think it's exactly what the Islamic Republic of Iran wants. It's forwarding a narrative that silences these protesters and these dissidents. That's exactly what they did with that piece of propaganda. You know, they're very good at sort of releasing pressure valves occasionally, so they're not so under pressure by the international community.

and take away the spotlight from their atrocities. But let's be clear, the person inside Iran who alluded to the fact that the morality police has been disbanded and there will be no further crackdowns, I think it was floating this as a trial balloon. He had no legal authority to make that call. And yes, the media should have been far more prudent in fact-checking before reporting that because what it does when you report a falsity like that, it immediately, takes the spotlight away from the struggle of the Iranian people, well, okay, great, they'd

won, right? They've disbanded the morality police and we're done, except for the fact that, A, that's not true and B, now the cause is far greater than just disbanding the morality police. In fact, the people of Iran contact me daily saying, yes, what started with the compulsory hijab has now grown into something far greater. The compulsory hijab is just an outward symbol of the oppression and segregation of what women and girls face in Iran. So essentially, this has become a pro-democracy movement, the spark and the engine of which were women and women's rights. But we can't deny that in this moment it is far greater than just that one issue. And so to deflate it, to have the media sort of quickly report on something, as if to appease the people

who are criticizing their reporting in the first place, I think it is extremely dangerous and can, in some instances, undo the incredible work they've done to that point. Yes. I'm so glad we have you here to speak about that so passionately. I just have one final question, which is about exactly the passionate speaking you have been doing on your social media platforms. Again, something that was being messaged to me by some women in Iran was shadow banning being an issue on social media. Did you feel as though your content on what was happening in Iran was being blocked by the social media algorithms? Is that something that you encountered? Yes. First of all, the Islamic Republic and regimes like that will use cyber army tactics.

So basically they'll have tens of thousands of people essentially attack dissidents who are reporting or fighting for the rights of the Iranian people, people like me. So there will be smear campaigns, there will be coordinated efforts to silence us. But on top of that, there are accounts that are being banned. Because social media on the whole is banned in Iran. So people inside Iran use VPNs and other tactics to get access to, the content that people like me are putting out. But, you know, this is a real consequence of the activism that we do outside of Iran. The reach is real. I've been hacked. I've been,

you know, there's been a number of things that have happened to me. Of course, it pales in comparison to the risks that the people inside Iran on the streets of Iran are taking. So I will continue doing everything I can, and I cannot be stopped. They will try, but I won't be silence. Amazing. Nazanin, we're so glad that we could have you here today. Before we say goodbye, we would just love you to tell our listeners where they can follow you and get all of this important content. And if there's anything else, you have to plug. Thank you so much for the important work you ladies do. It's so incredibly important that we platform truth and truth telling. And I would love for people to join me on at Nazaleen

Boniardi, which is my handle on Twitter and on Instagram, where I basically have devoted most of my timeline to the cause for justice, freedom and dignity for the Iranian people. Thank you for listening. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone.

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produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfair. Thank you.