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.
February 8, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
Women’s Circus (Building Communities and Bodies at the Same Time)
The Women's Circus of Australia, founded in 1991, offers training with the aims of building physical self-confidence and community cooperation. This program begins with a discussion of the history of circuses and of women in circuses, and continues with interviews with a graduate of Australia's National Institute of Circus Arts and an instructor and performer in Australia's Women's Circus.
ListenFebruary 1, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
WINGS: Peacebuilding in Kenya
The intense post-election violence of 2007 bankrupted Mary Oyier's new business. She and other women started talking with youths about their frustrations, then bringing together organizations and civil society networks with government to start addressing the problems among ethnic groups. They built a national network including both religious and civil society groups, and adopted Cobo technology to communicate clearly with government. Oyier says that networking - including between countries, and especially among women - is important for getting new ideas and that it's essential for peace
ListenJanuary 25, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
WINGS: Syrians Hoping (part 2 of 2)
Afra Jalabi and Mohja Kahf, based at universities respectively in Canada and the US, are very involved with their home country Syria. They engage in heated discussion about the complex situation on the ground there, about international interference, and about their hopes and fears over whether the next step will be a democracy including all the country's cultures, or an Islamist dictatorship that oppresses women.
Read MoreJanuary 18, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
WINGS: Syria Rising (part 1 of 2)
Just days after the dictator Assad fled for Russia, the two of them joined interviewer Kate Raphael (then in Palestine) via Zoom to talk about the complex events, and the history of resistance, especially by women. Program includes sounds of women celebrating, and of women being released from prison. Next week in Part 2 they discuss their hopes and fears about what is next for Syria.
Read MoreJanuary 11, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
What Is Fascism? (Then and Now)
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (an Irish republican socialist, political activist, and feminist) gave this passionate speech in Dublin in 2017, upon the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in 1937 in the Basque region of Spain. She speaks of fascism as de-humanization, Muslims as the new scapegoats, the political origins and philosophies of republicanism vs nationalism, and populist fascist Donald Trump.
Read MoreJanuary 4, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs
Climate Change Kenya
In this interview with Diana Wanyonyi, Agnes Leina describes both how water shortages forced a change in the lives of herding peoples in Kenya and how her organization honors indigenous knowledge and traditions. Agnes Leina is the Executive Director and founder of Illaramatak Community Concerns and a pastoralist from Baragoi, Samburu County, in Northern Kenya. She worked on getting indigenous rights and gender in the UN Climate agreement.
Read MoreDecember 28, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Mothering as Gift
Today's show provides a talk given by Genevieve Vaughan at the 2016 conference of the Mothering Institute for Research and Community Involvement in Toronto. Vaughan demonstrates that the act of mothering is unilateral gift-giving, and that an infant's experience of being mothered (whether by biological mother or other) builds both the physical brain and the template of what it is to be human. She further asserts that the entire exchange economy is parasitic on a more fundamental gift economy that continues unacknowledged in most societies today. This program's audio includes an excerpt from a video by Dr. Allan Schore, a clinical faculty member of the Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
Read MoreDecember 21, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Solstice Rituals
Winter Solstice (December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere) is a physical event and it is also an occasion for ritual and contemplation. In this program, Frieda Werden asks questions of two experienced practitioners of an earth-based, women-centred religion about what they do and how they came to their vocations. They also make suggestions for privately engaging with the darkest night. Our guests are Letecia Layson and Holin (Blackmoon) Kennen, both whom are high priestesses of Dianic Wicca in the Z. Budapest Line.
Read MoreDecember 7, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Play Like a Girl (or not)
Think computer games are just a boy's world? Think again. Brenda Laurel deeply transformed the gaming and computer worlds from their early days - and she got her start in Theatre. She advocates for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, designed some games to appeal to girls' strengths, and pioneered virtual reality. Her Ph.D. dissertation, published in 1986, was titled Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System, and it formed the basis of her 1993 book "Computers as Theater". Brenda told her life story to Suki Wessling, host of the podcast The Babblery, and Suki shared part of that longer interview with WINGS.
Read MoreNovember 30, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
FIRE at Cairo
According to the United Nations Population Fund website: In 1994 the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, transformed global thinking on population and development issues and defined a bold agenda, placing peoples dignity and rights at the heart of sustainable development. Their page does not mention that this shift was birthed through strategic coordinated actions of the global women's movement.
In 1995, Maria Suarez, founding producer of Costa-Rica-based daily shortwave program Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE/Radio Feminista Internacional), and author of the book "Women's Voices", told WINGS the exciting story of feminist media's central role in this organizing effort. Updated in advance of the 30th anniversary of the women and media section of the Beijing Platform for Action, Section J, adopted at the UN's 4th World Conference on Women.
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