75 Renowned television journalist Rina Mazliah is the first to admit: Television is a superficial medium. Nonetheless, as she explained to a lecture hall of Bar-Ilan female researchers last April, it’s a very effective tool for spreading messages. The “messages,” in this case, are the value of academic research, from scientific discovery with the potential to save lives to scholarship that informs the public discourse. Yet while both male and female academics are engaged in media-worthy research, males consistently outnumber females when it comes to media interviews. At the initiative of President Prof. Arie Zaban and Vice President for Research Prof. Shulamit Michaeli, the first annual Seminar on Female Researchers’ Media Empowerment aimed to shift the balance by first explaining the professional benefits of media appearances, and then demystifying the interview process. The seminar, whichwas organized by Vice President of Marketing Naama Gat and Spokesperson Anat Lev-Confortes, who also acted as moderator, went on to address the key concerns that keep female researchers from the spotlight. Echoing Mazliah’s insistence that interviews are “female academics’ obligation to the community,” Zaban emphasized that media exposure isn’t just an important opportunity to advance their individual work. Speaking to hundreds of female researchers, postdocs, and doctoral students, Zaban explained that interviews also make “an irreplaceable contribution to tomorrow’s generation of women academicians, who need to hear female voices coming from the academy today.” Speaking Up for Themselves The Seminar on Female Researchers’ Media Empowerment
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