Gaza – Not all the risks facing women journalists are visible. Alongside targeting, field and mobility-related risks, the pressures of war and displacement, and working in extremely difficult conditions, women journalists face other less visible challenges that can deeply affect their sense of safety and their ability to continue working. These include harassment and inappropriate conduct within the workplace or while reporting in the field.
Amid war, such issues often fall by the wayside as survival and the continuation of journalistic work become the most immediate priorities. More difficult still, many women journalists have no safe space in which to speak about these experiences in the first place, particularly amid the absence or weakness of institutional structures, the growing reliance on freelance journalism—especially among younger journalists—and social norms that can make discussing harassment highly sensitive, sometimes pushing women journalists into silence for fear of blame, disbelief, or losing work opportunities.
Against this backdrop, Palestine Journalism Hub organized a training workshop in Gaza for women journalists on social safety in the journalistic workplace, preventing harassment, and responding to it professionally within media organizations and in the field. The workshop created space for an issue that often remains unspoken, despite its direct impact on women journalists’ professional and personal well-being.
The importance of the workshop went beyond providing information. It was also about creating a space to listen—a space where women journalists could, away from the pressures of reporting and fieldwork, speak about situations, experiences, and questions they may never have previously had an appropriate space to raise, while learning safer and more professional ways to respond to them.
This was particularly important for young women journalists and freelancers working in highly precarious conditions: amid displacement, tents and temporary workplaces, unstable institutions and sources of income, and the intense pressures of field reporting. Such circumstances can make it even harder to speak about rights and protection, and may sometimes push a journalist into silence when she encounters an unsafe situation.
Harassment does not occur in a vacuum. It can intersect with power imbalances in the workplace, a journalist’s dependence on a job opportunity, assignment, or source of income, and the absence of a clear mechanism or institution to which she can turn. In some cases, silence becomes a way of protecting oneself from professional or social consequences that may feel too difficult to bear.
For this reason, the workshop focused on how to recognize unsafe behavior, set boundaries, respond to situations, seek support, and understand available options, while also addressing the responsibility of media organizations to build environments that protect women journalists and respect their dignity.
The workshop generated strong engagement and a rich discussion, with participants sharing different experiences and raising questions that reflected the need for such spaces—not only to raise awareness, but also to break the isolation that can surround these issues and create opportunities to understand and address them without fear or stigma.
In a reality dominated by news of bombardment, targeting, displacement, and survival, talking about social safety may appear secondary. Yet for a journalist facing risks from multiple directions, it is an integral part of her safety and cannot be separated from her professional, physical, and psychological well-being.
The workshop is part of Palestine Journalism Hub’s broader vision of creating a supportive environment for journalists, one that goes beyond developing professional skills to address the issues that affect their ability to practice journalism safely and with dignity. Social safety is an essential part of this approach. It provides knowledge and space for expression and seeking support, while giving women journalists greater confidence and agency to address violations and unsafe situations rather than facing them alone or under the weight of silence.
Such spaces also help shift responsibility away from women journalists alone and toward media organizations and relevant stakeholders, by strengthening awareness of the need for clear policies and safe mechanisms to address harassment and misconduct, rather than leaving journalists to navigate issues that concern the safety of the entire workplace through individual choices alone.
The Gaza workshop is part of a series of workshops and trainings that Palestine Journalism Hub plans to implement for women journalists across Palestine, including the West Bank, with the aim of strengthening safer and more supportive journalistic workplaces and reinforcing the understanding that safety is a fundamental part of the right to practice journalism—not an additional privilege.
