JINHA

AMED - This March 8, JINHA Women's News Agency, headquartered in Diyarbakır in Northern Kurdistan, will enter its fourth year of producing news by and about women in all four parts of Kurdistan, Turkey and beyond with increased English service. In addition to its daily wire services in Kurdish, Turkish and English, the agency will be opening an Arabic service soon.

JINHA is the only all-women news agency in Kurdistan and one of the few all-women news agencies in the world. A group of women founded JINHA in 2012 to address the under- and misrepresentation of women in media. The agency has bureaus in Diyarbakır, Van, and Istanbul, reporters in Izmir, Batman, Şırnak, Antalya and Siirt, and teams in Rojava and Southern Kurdistan.

JINHA's operative principle of producing news through women's solidarity, rather than competition, is designed to counter a capitalist and patriarchal system that individualizes women. From camerapeople to reporters to bureau chiefs, JINHA's news is produced entirely by women. In their original statement, founding JINHA journalists said they were frustrated by images of women that ranged from the wretched to the monstrous to the pornographic, but consistently reduced women to an objectified position.

Four years later, the misrepresentation of women and especially Kurdish women remains an issue, with Kurdish women appearing widely in the world press due to their role in the Rojava women's revolution and the defense of Kobanê from Daesh.

JINHA editor Zehra Doğan, one of the agency's founders, says that they set out to work against the male mentality and media that defines women as "damned and pornographic."

"The male system orchestrated all reactions towards women, until now. Women are defined in the pro-male media as either pornographic subjects, victims or villains," explained Zehra."We are trying to set up our alternative against this. We are working to say 'stop.' We aim to change the language of media."

JINHA reporter Asya Tekin underlines that they founded this agency through the struggle of women across the world—from Virginia Woolf, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin to Kurdish women journalists and fighters Gurbetelli Ersöz, Şilan Aras, Sakine Cansız and Deniz Fırat.

"We are producing our news in a context where male media constantly asks, 'what business do you have doing this,'" said Asya. "We will continue to struggle against thismentality."

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