Women in Media NGO has added a new Equality Practices section to its website, bringing together success stories from Ukrainian newsrooms that have put standards of equality, diversity, inclusion, and non-discrimination into practice.
Equality Practices is a space where newsrooms, journalists, and civil society can learn from one another. It offers real-world examples of solutions Ukrainian media are already using, both in how they run their teams and in how they produce content.
Practices can be filtered by region, media type, and format, making it easy for newsrooms to find the examples most relevant to them and adapt them to their own needs and resources.
Alongside the case studies, the new section offers ready-to-use tools that newsrooms can tailor to their own work: editorial policy templates, content guidelines, practical how-to guides, and more.
“Last year, together with the media regulator, we honored newsrooms that are championing equality and diversity. We wanted their experience to benefit other outlets too, so we brought these practices together in an open online database.
We hope newsrooms will find solutions here that they can adapt to their own work, and that they’ll share their own in turn. We’re keeping this initiative going, and we plan to hold the next awards ceremony ahead of March 8, the International Day for Women’s Rights,” said Liza Kuzmenko, Head of Women in Media.
Practices and Tools for Newsrooms
The practices and tools featured on the website are also included in the collection Media That Make a Change: Best Equality and Diversity Practices in Ukrainian Newsrooms.
The collection offers a structured overview of how Ukrainian media are advancing equality and diversity. It features case studies from national and local newsrooms that reported changes to their content and internal operations during 2024–2025.
The publication covers management decisions, editorial approaches, examples of gender-sensitive content, ways of supporting teams internally, responses to discrimination, and tools that other newsrooms can adapt.
Both the collection and the new website section were made possible through cooperation with the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine and with the support of International Media Support (IMS).
“IMS’s Global Strategy for 2024–2028 calls for the systematic integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles and a human rights–based approach (HRBA) into media development.
Public-interest media should help build inclusive communities and civic space, and push back against the prejudice, stereotypes, and other forces that drive exclusion and deepen inequality.
That is why promoting DEI will remain one of IMS’s key priorities. We will keep working with our partners to strengthen the uptake of these principles across the media sector,” said Gohar Khodjayan, Head of IMS Projects in Ukraine and Head of the IMS Representative Office in Kyiv.
What Ukrainian newsrooms’ experience shows
The practices collected here show that equality and diversity need not be an extra burden. They can be part of running a newsroom well. Clear rules, transparent procedures, and a safe working environment help support teams, reduce the risk of burnout, and preserve institutional memory.
Many effective practices also require little in the way of funding. Often, what matters most is rethinking language and representation, how roles are assigned, how teams communicate internally, and how conflicts are handled.
The practices also reveal how a newsroom’s internal processes shape its content. Gender-sensitive and inclusive journalism helps portray different groups more responsibly, reduces the risk of discrimination and hate speech, and brings media closer to the lived experience of a wider range of people.
Share your newsroom’s practice
The database is open to new contributions. If your newsroom has successfully put standards of equality, diversity, inclusion, or non-discrimination into practice, whether in its internal work or in its content, we’d love to hear about it.
Just fill out a short form to propose your practice for the database.
The more newsrooms share their solutions, the more practical examples the Ukrainian media community will have to drive change.