Women’s participation in journalism—especially in newsrooms, leadership, and coverage—is essential to ensure more complete, fair, and socially valuable reporting.
Miami (March 6, 2026) —On International Women’s Day, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) reaffirms its commitment to women journalists who face real and persistent risks every day simply for doing their work—both in the field and in the digital spaces where public debate unfolds and society’s right to be informed is increasingly shaped.
Women journalists face specific and growing forms of violence: systematic online harassment, smear campaigns, and threats that combine attacks on their gender identity with their reporting work, according to data from UNESCO and the Committee to Protect Journalists, as well as information compiled by the IAPA.
Doxxing — the public exposure of personal information with the intent to intimidate — remains one of the most commonly used tools to silence them. This phenomenon functions as a form of censorship that is particularly difficult to eradicate.
“The IAPA reaffirms its commitment to promoting conditions that allow women journalists to carry out their work safely and without intimidation, and to calling for concrete measures that guarantee their protection, both physically and online,” said IAPA President Pierre Manigault, who leads Evening Post Publishing Inc., based in Charleston, South Carolina.
This date also invites recognition of the role journalism plays in building more open and just societies. Its practice helps broaden public debate, bring inequalities to light, and strengthen the principles of equality and justice for which journalists throughout the region work every day.
The IAPA has taken steps to advance this goal. In August 2025, the organization signed a memorandum of understanding with the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) of the Organization of American States (OAS), establishing a strategic alliance to promote gender equity and the participation of women in journalism across the Americas. As the first concrete result of this partnership, the 2026 IAPA Awards for Excellence in Journalism include, for the first time, the category “Inter-American Journalism with a Perspective on Equality,” sponsored by the CIM, which recognizes work that rigorously investigates and reports on situations of inequality or initiatives that produce verifiable progress toward equality.
“Women are central to the journalism we need. Their presence in newsrooms, in leadership roles, and in coverage of the issues that matter should not be a symbolic gesture, but a condition for more complete, fairer, and more useful journalism for society,” said Graciela Rock, chair of the IAPA’s Gender Equity and Diversity Committee, from the Mexican digital outlet La Cadera de Eva.
The IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending and promoting freedom of the press and expression in the Americas. It comprises more than 1,300 publications from the western hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida, United States.