Mexican Women's Communication and Information Service [Comunicación e Información de la Mujer (CIMAC)]

The CIMAC network intentionally has a horizontal, non-traditional structure. All members are fully part of the network, without representatives, spokespeople, or title-holders. Men are allowed to participate; CIMAC organisers understand the need to make alliances between women and men (particularly because men have editorial decision-making power in most media outlets - as editors, heads of departments, and owners).

CIMAC took as its starting point the calendar related to women's rights, by promoting coverage of International Women's Day and other important dates in the history of the feminist movement. Thus, the project started without any need for infrastructure (e.g., desks); the strategy was to integrate women's issues into the daily work of the members - who, as reporters, were already out on the street - without creating extra work. CIMAC's Director explains, "We had to produce stories without it becoming a double workload for us. If I'm looking at workers' news, how do I start looking at the women in that story? If your beat is education, how do you consider the women involved? We women are everywhere - that is something we emphasize in CIMAC. You don't need to work as a journalist to take on this issue. If you're always asking yourself where the women are, you will find the other story, hidden behind the one that everyone sees."

Today, CIMAC has 4 main work areas:

1. The news agency, which produces and publishes articles (for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and websites) from a gender perspective. CIMAC has its own online news service. One of CIMAC's first projects was the creation of a supplement in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, called "Double Shift" ("La Doble Jornada").
2. The documentation centre, which provides journalists with historical documents about women's struggles in Mexico. The centre aims to recover women's past contributions and knowledge, offering background information to both male and female reporters.
3. The maintenance of permanent communication with the mainstream media, including developing a daily mechanism to keep the media informed on women's issues. CIMAC liaises with these outlets to encourage them to recognise feminists as valuable contacts on issues such as violence against women, women's healthcare, etc. CIMAC has a press office that works to open up this dialogue with all media outlets.
4. The construction of alliances, starting with CIMAC's creation of the National Network of Women Journalists (Red Nacional de Periodistas, or RNP) in 1995. To create RNP, CIMAC began to share their proposal with male and female journalists across Mexico. CIMAC then organised a gathering of women journalists and politicians to discuss the issue of women in the media and the situation in which women were living. CIMAC also participated in the creation of networks of journalists in certain Mexican states, as well as 4 international journalists' networks: the Network of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean; the Trinational Journalists' Network: Mexico, United States, and Canada; the Latin American Network of Journalists; and the International Network of Journalists with a Vision of Gender. The RNP is on the board of the International Network. CIMAC also collaborates with the Latin American Women's News Service (Servicios de Noticias de la Mujer de América Latina y el Caribe, SEMLAC).

In addition, CIMAC carries out various actions on media strategy and grassroots communication, including consultations for a wide range of organisations and institutions, production of related materials, and the hosting of over 300 workshops for journalists in Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean on non-sexist journalism, citizenship, sexual and reproductive rights, public population policy, violence and human rights, journalistic research, speech, radio, content analysis, and gender and self-esteem.

CIMAC journalists have also created media with a gender perspective in the media outlets where they work - of their own initiative, and often as volunteers.

Gender, Women, Rights.

CIMAC faces many challenges - even just in meeting its primary objective: "demonstrating that what happens to women constitutes news." Another challenge is the concentration of the media in Mexico, where a limited number of people are the owners of multiple outlets. Another serious problem is the vulnerability suffered by Mexican journalists because of widespread violence in Mexico. CIMAC's Director explains, "Psychologically, the attacks affect us. We ask ourselves, 'How far will I go with this investigation?'" In a context of growing violence due to drug trafficking and organised crime, women journalists receive threats - according to CIMAC - not only against themselves, but also against their children, as an intimidation tactic.