#WomensLives Being Black in Honduras: One Woman’s Story of Longing and Belonging

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

I am so excited that I am getting the chance to take part in an initiative to highlight the lack of focus on women and women’s issues in the news media and really in society at large. Public Radio International (PRI) has spearheaded this initiative called Across Women’s Lives and has partnered with Blogher to help get the word out. Blogher is how I get involved.

My job is simple. I get to highlight all of the amazing journalism PRI and its media partners are creating that highlight women all over the world. From the PRI website, here’s a sense of what they are trying to do. ” PRI’s The World and our partners will travel across the globe to share stories of what it takes to change the status of women. We’ll look at how initiatives that raise women’s status affect their communities and countries.”

As a female journalist myself, I know I always interpret the news and tell stories from a woman’s perspective, so I am flabbergasted by statistics that show “only about 24 percent of all news subjects talk about women in any way and only six percent of news stories highlight gender inequality.” That’s unbelievable to me, yet not really. *sigh*

But PRI is doing something about it in a big way, and I’m ready to lend a hand and a voice. As I said, my job is to simply show you all what great stories are being produced by PRI about women all over the world. Of course, this story about the plight of Black people in Honduras caught my eye. I have never heard of the Garifuna culture before listening to this story. Now I must add it to my list of “Kinky Gazpacho” communities of color in Spanish-speaking countries.

Peace!