An all-women website, which will focus on struggles and achievements of women with a view to bridge the gender gap in digital world, is all set to be launched in Kerala. The portal is envisaged as a repository of news, articles, studies, interviews, interactive sessions, biographies and other information on women especially from the state.
www.womenpoint.in will be a digital platform exclusively for the women run by women. According to activist-journalist, R Parvathi Devi, one of the brains behind the initiative, the website is aimed at marking the space of women in the male-dominated digital world.
“This is the first such comprehensive website for women run by women. We can call it as a digital space of the women, by the women, for the women,” she told.
“Our main thrust is to document the struggles and achievements of women in our society especially those belonging to the marginalised section. We want our website to be an one-stop shop for all comprehensive news, information and content related to women in near future,” she said.
Any content whether it is news, resource information or documentation, that focused on ‘women’s issue’, would find a place in the website, the tagline of which is ‘Debate, Discussion, Friendship – A Space for Women’, she said.
Any women, who has a flair for writing, can contribute content in it and those who already publish articles in other medias can open an ‘article locker’ in this website in which they can upload their stories, both published and unpublished.
“Generally, mainstream media does not have a gender-friendly approach while dealing with news. Women’s stories and issues do not get a fair treatment in it. At the same time, negative stories, with women at at the centre, often get much attention these days,” she said.
Though it would be a Malayalam portal in the beginning it was planned as a bilingual platform with English content in the long run, she said.
News articles related to women, appeared in various news papers, would be uploaded daily. Video-audio clips and pictures would also be included, she said. ‘Round Table, ‘View Point’, Complaint Box‘, ‘News Page’ and ‘Digital Point’ are some among the categories in which the contents are uploaded, Parvathi said.
Information on various helplines, rescue shelters, short stay homes, women welfare organisations, hostels and so on are among the other features incorporated in the site. ‘Book Market’ is another slot where the books penned by women would be introduced. There are plans to turn it as a space to market and sell books authored by women through this slot in future.
Besides Parvathi, writer-translator Suneetha Balakrishnan and Government run Malayalam Mission director Suja Susan George are the other persons behind the website. Eminent poet Sugathakumari will launch the website in a function here on March 21.
