National • News & Public Affairs
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service is an all-woman independent radio production company that produces and distributes news and current affairs programs by and about women around the world.
WINGS is at different times horrifying, exciting, funny, eye-opening and definitely inspirational. — Nikki Reece, program producer, Plains FM, Christchurch, New Zealand
WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service is an all-woman independent radio production company that produces and distributes news and current affairs programs by and about women around the world. WINGS programs are used by non-commercial radio stations, women’s studies, and individuals. Programs can be heard on local radio stations, on shortwave, on the internet, and on cassettes. The WINGS Mailing List provides updates on stories and new information about women’s media. “Though I have been involved in women’s issues for years, I was still struck by the contrast of your broadcast to the news we are usually hearing — news reflecting male interests in a basically male world. Women’s affairs are a hidden current in the flow of world events.”– Kristin Reilly, listener, Buffalo, New YorkWINGS Mailing List:E-mail [email protected] to receive periodic e-mail updates about WINGS programs and women’s media issues.
Upcoming Episodes
June 22, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Parliament Women
The International Parliamentary Union (IPU) is an organization currently comprising 180 of the 190 national parliaments currently functioning in the world. One of their activities is ranking countries by the percentage of women in their legislative bodies. As of April 24, 2024, Rwanda still held the top spot, followed by Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico - Australia was in 32nd place - Canada, 65th. The US was tied with Iraq for 72nd place. These percentages have a lot to do with the countries' electoral systems - as Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Irish Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee explain. New Zealand was ranked in 16th place for percentage of women in Parliament, and Ireland was 103rd. But even at just 37%, Irish women have influence in Parliament. The two women politicians explain the special barriers that women in politics so often face, and the how and why of examples of legislative successes from their respective countries.
Read MoreJune 15, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
When Socialization and Sexism Collide
Berit As, now 96 years old, has been a psychologist, a politician, a professor, and an activist - but she began her professional career as a statistician. In this interview, she tells how she introduced gender-disaggregation into Norway's accident statistics, and her conclusions about how boys and girls were socialized with respect to risk-taking - and about the establishment's resistance to recognizing that women were safer workers and drivers than men. The feminist university that Berit As initiated has become a research arm of Norway's university system.
ListenJune 8, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
War and Climate Change
On May 29, 2024, WINGS attended an online press briefing, titled "War and Climate Change", hosted by Covering Climate Now - a collaboration of Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and The Guardian. Keynote speakers were Ellie Kinney, a Campaign Coordinator for the Conflict and Environment Observatory (a UK-based non-governmental organization which monitors and raises awareness of the environmental dimensions of armed conflicts and military activities); Dr. Neta C. Crawford, a political science professor at the University of Oxford; and Rawan Damen, Director-General of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), based in Amman, Jordan.
ListenJune 1, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Murder in the WAC
In 1947, in Tokyo, 500 women were dishonorably discharged from the US Army on the charge of homosexuality. Murder in the WAC is a one-woman show written and performed by Pat Bond, about how lesbians were recruited into the US military during the war and after the war expelled. There are a few mentions of the word sh-t that have had their vowels silenced for radio. Also a euphemistic reference to lesbian sex. This is comedy, but with a tragic ending.
Read MoreMay 25, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Words for Water
Canadian poet and activist Rita Wong reads from her essays and poems that contrast traditional indigenous knowledge of and respect for water and the settler practices of burying streams and carelessly polluting this finite and essential element for all life on earth. Rita Wong, acclaimed poet and associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization. She focuses on poetics of water.
Read MoreMay 18, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Building Peace in Kenya by Rescuing Youth
Diana Wanyonyi, producer of this program, has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Katherine Davenport Award for the hottest women's news stories of the year. This is one of the ten dynamic programs she produced for WINGS in series year 2023. Diana lives and reports from Mombasa, Kenya.
Read MoreMay 11, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Labouring Women
A documentary by Elena McMaster of Australia's Women on the Line pairs up Marxist Feminist class analysis (with explanation of terms), and rousing words from women who lived and live class and race division of labour from Sojourner Truth, to Lowell, Massachusetts mill worker Harriet Hanson Robinson, to British poet/MC Kate Tempest.
Featured Speakers/Guests: Anastasia Gomes, Laura Renata Martin, Maya Gonzalez and Silvia Federici, recorded in 2011 at a Historical Materialism conference in New York. Plus illustrative readings by Alice Walker, Kate Tempest, and Lili Taylor reading their own and others' words.
May 4, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Red Rosa (Mayday Special)
Rosa Luxemburg was one of the most influential political theorists of her day. She lived from 1871 until 1919, when she was assassinated by the newly-elected socialist government of Germany. Luxemburg had written that socialism by gradual reform of the capitalist-oriented system would never provide for the needs of workers and that only revolution could do the job. She was strongly in favour of the innovation of May First as International Labour Day. In many countries, it's still a national holiday - but it originated as a day for workers across the globe to stop work and show their collective power. Rosa Luxemburg's life was complicated, but one author boiled it down to a popular book, "Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg." Here are excerpts from an interview with the author of that book, Kate Evans - courtesy of Mitchel Cohen of community radio WBAI in New York City.
Read MoreApril 27, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
The Motherworld (vs. the sky god )
Barbara Alice Mann, Ph.D., is a longtime Professor of Humanities at the University of Toledo. Among her numerous books are "Daughters of Mother Earth" (paperback as "Make a Beautiful Way") and "Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas." She is an Ohio Bear Clan Senece community member and lives in her Ohio homeland. This talk was her keynote speech to the event A (M)otherworld Is Possible, which was held in Toronto and was embedded in the 2nd World Congress on Matriarchal Studies, 2009. She contrasts the all-inclusive indigenous world with hierarchically imposed culture.
Read MoreApril 20, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
New Witches (Canadians re-creating the craft)
Two Canadians (one from a Scottish background and one from a Romanian background) discuss their historic links to witchcraft, their self-discovery as witches, and their analyses of what is happening with the craft. Featured speakers are Andra Zlatescu, musician, and Laura Hokstad, podcast host - both being Canadian witches.
Read MoreApril 13, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Matriarchal Societies
Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, while on a tour of North America in 2013, discussed her latest book translated into English: "Matriarchal Societies: Studies on Indigenous Cultures Across the Globe." She was interviewed in Canada by Kristin Schwartz. The author explained that matriarchy does not mean rule by women, but rather that mothers/mother figures are the central organizers of these societies that prioritize the welfare of children, consensus decision-making, and role divisions based upon individuals' gender role choices rather than on biological sex lines. Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a German feminist and scholar, a founder of the modern matriarchal studies movement, and of the International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality (HAGIA).
Read More