Our Mission
The Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence works with independent journalists, media outlets and Schools of Journalism to strengthen reporting on gender-based violence, reduce its prevalence globally, and advocate for women journalists under threat --- particularly those from marginalized communities, and those under attack for reporting on gender-based violence.
The Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence is run by Rutgers University's Institute for Women's Leadership.
Team
Director
Cathy Otten is a writer and author of With Ash On Their Faces: Yezidi Women and the Islamic State (OR books 2017). Cathy directs the Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence at Rutgers University, and is a Visiting Global Associate at Rutgers University’s Institute for Women's leadership. She is also a Senior Lecturer in journalism at the University of Bolton. The Los Angeles Review of Books described With Ash on Their Faces as: "The best kind of humanist journalism: lucid, transparent, grimly realistic.… (N)o book has covered it better.” She is a former reporter for the Independent and has written for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, BBC, Politico, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Vogue, American Scholar, and more. In 2018, she won the One World Media New Voice Award and was a finalist for the Kurt Schork courage in journalism award.
Global Advisory Group
Our advisory group includes lawyers, journalists, editors, scholars, activists, and communications experts from the US, Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Europe.
Partner Organizations
THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTER