Women’s Media Awards Celebrate Leaders in Film, Abortion Rights, Community Media, Labor Rights, and Feminist Scholarship
In a political climate where diversity initiatives and civil rights are under frequently law-breaking attacks, it has become more urgent for women finding strength in community to fight back against these attacks and keep pushing for progress. This call to action was voiced by several recipients and presenters at the 2025 Women’s Media Awards, which were presented on June 5 at the JW Marriott Essex House in New York City.
The honorees this year are documentarian Geralyn White Dreyfous (WMC Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award); Epicenter-NYC and URL Media founder S. Mitra Kalita (WMC Carol Jenkins Award); and three recipients of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices Impact Award: Harvard University professor Imani Perry, Jobs With Justice executive director Erica Smiley, and abortion rights journalist/activist Jessica Valenti.
WMC president Julie Burton greeted attendees by thanking participants and colleagues and commenting on the 20th anniversary of the founding of WMC: “Twenty years ago, Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem founded the Women’s Media Center. From Day One, our goal has been to shake up all parts of the media so that we can see and hear … and all kinds of women … across all media platforms.”
Burton continued, “When we started, there were very few women experts featured in news stories. Now, because of WMC Progressive Women’s Voices and WMC SheSource, we see diverse women experts every day on most news platforms. And we trained and promote many of them. And as we pushed for more women in TV shows and Hollywood movies, and awards ceremonies of all kinds, we have begun to see the numbers going up for women in front of and, slowly, behind the cameras. There is much more work to do for women behind the cameras.”
Burton added, “Today’s vicious backlash and relentless retaliation against the progress made for women, people of color, LGBTQ, and more underscores the impact we have had over our 20 years and the need to dig in and continue the fight.”
She concluded, “We stand firm in our support of inclusion. We stand firm in our fight for a seat at the table. We stand firm for equal rights and access. We stand firm in our right to participate and have a voice in our media and our democracy, and to tell the stories that matter and tell them as if women matter. Thank you for seeing us, lifting us up, and making our work possible.”
In her introduction of Dreyfous, WMC co-chair emerita Pat Mitchell commented: “Geralyn joined me and others to create the Women at Sundance initiative, which highlights challenges for women in the film industry and was the No. 1 event during Sundance for many years. She’s had more films with her name on them at Sundance Film Festival than any other single individual. There should probably be a Geralyn Dreyfous film festival.”
Mitchell went on to present the WMC Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award to Dreyfous “for her long-standing impact on the power of storytelling, her diligence in amplifying the voices of women storytellers, and her legacy of dozens of films that elevate women’s perspectives and lives.”
Emmy-winning producer Dreyfous, a co-founder of the production company Impact Partners and the distributor Jolt, has a long list of award-winning movies and TV shows in her career, including 2004’s Born Into Brothels, 2013’s Brave Miss World, 2020’s Belly of the Beast, 2021’s Nuclear Family, and 2022’s Navalny. In her acceptance speech, Dreyfous said, “A few weeks ago, I was listening to Maria Shriver in an interview with Oprah [Winfrey]. They talked about the master class of friendship and how times like these require master classes in friendship.”
Dreyfous continued, “I look at Robin [Morgan] and Gloria [Steinem] and Pat [Mitchell] and Jane [Fonda] — and I want to put Marlo Thomas in that group and so many other women — and the cultural narratives that raised me. I was lucky to have a mother who took us to libraries and took out Free to Be You and Me and got us [other] books.”
When speaking about government-funded public programs that are under threat of de-funding and censorship in the United States, Dreyfous got tearfully emotional and said: “Some of that is going away. It’s going to be taken over by people who don’t have stories and empathy.” She addressed the challenge of getting distribution for inclusive content: “We all have to lean in together, all of us who care about this content. We just can’t let them tell us what they want to do.” She also warned about the backlash against the #MeToo movement. “We have to be prepared for that because it’s happening right now.”
WMC founding president Carol Jenkins introduced Kalita, a former CNN Digital executive, by saying, “During the [COVID-19] pandemic, award-winning veteran journalist S. Mitra Kalita decided to step back from her role as a national media executive to amplify the voices of those who know their communities best under the inclusive umbrella of URL Media. Although she had become one of the most prominent women in broadcasting, she demonstrated that success is not only defined by scale. She says, ‘After 21 years in mainstream media, I no longer wanted to write about our communities, I wanted to write for them.’”
Jenkins continued, “Uniquely positioned to try something new in delivering news, Mitra now focuses on community engagement, sharing information that is action-oriented and uplifts people, rather than simply reporting on the problem. And in these times when organizations are under attack for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, she points out, ‘We need more diversity of thought, experience, and opinion, not less. Diversity is woven into everything we do. It’s not additive. If anything, it’s fundamental to our mission.’”
Kalita commented in her acceptance speech: “We are living in extraordinary times. And so, how we show up and who we show up for matters more than ever. It can feel like empathy is diminishing.” Kalita spoke fondly of her New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, which she called “an immigrant mecca.”
She added, “Those values and that way of life is under attack like never before. … Freedoms that generations before us, including my father and mother, are under attack. But as our beloved Gloria Steinem reminds us, empathy is the most radical of human emotions. The Carol Jenkins Award, named for … a phenomenal woman who built platforms for other women to thrive in media and in health, reminds us that leadership rooted in empathy and in action is world-changing.”
She shared a story about receiving and following through on advice in empathy from her mother, who told Kalita that every time she received a raise, she should also give a raise to the nanny who worked for Kalita.
“It feels like we’re in a fight for our very existence right now. It is worth noting that in governments that have shifted in autocracy and lost press freedoms, two distinct trends emerge: One is a lack of solidarity among the press. And the other is the lack of financial support for independent media and freedom of the press. I urge you with all the power and dollars and friends and networks you have to support community media right now — especially ethnic news, the Black press, and local news outlets.”
Before introducing Perry, WMC co-founder Jane Fonda remarked on the Donald Trump-endorsed “Big, Beautiful Bill” that was recently introduced in U.S. Congress: “We are doomed if this bill passes. Please write and call your senators and tell them to not support this bill.” Fonda also commented on the importance of community: “We are interconnected, and we are nature. If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.”
Fonda said when introducing Perry: “This room is filled with people, including myself, who have lived through dark times before. And Imani is right: The way we get through this is to hold fast to what we know to be our strengths, our worth, and our contributions. To build on what’s beautiful in our communities and our world. To share good information and resources. For example, in response to book bans, she says, get those books. “Read — defiantly. Find ways to get women access to reproductive health care — defiantly.”
Fonda continued, “Imani’s writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination. She says she crafts her work in response to, and resistance against, the social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress (like we’re experiencing now), and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. So absolutely read her books defiantly.”
In her acceptance speech, Perry, a professor in studies of women, gender, and sexuality, and African and African American studies, mentioned her mother and grandmother and commented: “I was raised to be a feminist.” Perry also said that she grew up in a family of 12 siblings, ten of whom are sisters, who all went to college.
Perry also thanked WMC. “Before I had been given any award or any public recognition, this organization invested in me and opened for me indispensable opportunities to cultivate my voice.” She continued, “In addition to being deeply honored by this recognition, I take it as an opportunity to renew my commitment to deep democracy — the kind that affirms the lives and the dignity and humanity of us all.”
Perry added, “Truth, justice, and human respect are under assault in this nation at every turn. And I’m hoping — and I think this room of people is a wonderful model of how we do this — that we take this moment to deepen ourselves and our conviction about justice and about humanity, but also we develop the kind of courage that is necessary to challenge all of this ugliness before it comes to our front door. Because no make no mistake about it: It will come for every single one of our friends. My last words are: ‘To freedom.’”
Women’s Media Center co-founder Robin Morgan introduced Smiley by saying, “Smiley has dedicated her life to the elevation of everyday workers to ensure that they are treated fairly — with dignity, safety, and justice as core tenets of their collective bargaining. The Center for Economic and Policy Research tells us that workers in frontline industries are disproportionately women. About one-half of all workers are women, but nearly two-thirds of frontline workers are women. They are particularly overrepresented in industries such as health care, child care, social services, fast food, and retail sales. Smiley centers the fight against patriarchy and white supremacy in this work, finding that this motivates people to take risks they haven't taken before.”
Smiley used her acceptance speech to talk mostly about her activism against Amazon’s labor practices, particularly for pregnant employees. She mentioned an Amazon worker named Jennifer who was refused pregnancy accommodations that she was entitled to by law. “We’ve received stories from more than 100 current and former pregnant Amazon workers who face challenges on the job. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, enraging, horrifying — including stories of workers who eventually did miscarry.”
Smiley continued, “But it doesn’t have to be this way. With your help, we can ensure the reproductive freedoms of working people are protected and enforced by taking action tonight, tomorrow, and every day until Amazon and other companies stop ignoring the needs of its workers.”
She encouraged people to go to the website Exposeamazon.org to sign a petition to support this cause. Smiley concluded, “Winning new laws means nothing if companies do not enforce them.”
WMC chair Janet Dewart Bell said when introducing Valenti: “Jessica, on behalf of the Women’s Media Center and our community, please know that we stand with you in this fight. Together, we will continue to raise our collective voices so that your daughter — and all of our daughters and granddaughters and goddaughters and nieces — can experience the full humanity and bodily autonomy that they deserve.”
Dewart Bell continued: “The attacks on women and reproductive rights are nonstop and unrelenting. For many years, Jessica has been bravely out in front, capturing the horror stories, decoding the misleading rhetoric, absorbing the body blows, and providing order to the chaos so the rest of us do not feel so overwhelmed. She gives us critical analysis, historical context, and language to talk about this issue.”
Dewart Bell concluded: “Jessica gets her strength and hope from all the people who are on the ground working hard to make sure that women can get the abortion care they need — whether through abortion funds, or providing bus tickets for women to go to pro-choice states, or mailing abortion pills to women who are unable to travel.”
Valenti, who founded and runs the website and newsletter Abortion, Every Day, spoke passionately about what it’s been like to be a journalist covering abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wadein 2022: “While we have some incredible journalists who are shining a light on post-Roe America … on a larger scale, the media really is failing to meet this moment.”
She named as an example the April arrest of Georgia resident Selena Maria Chandler-Scott, who had a miscarriage and was wrongfully accused of disposing of a dead body. Valenti said that mainstream media only paid attention to this case belatedly, and that it was “outrage on social media, not journalism, that brought the story to the masses and pressured the prosecutor to drop those charges.”
Valenti also named as example the “minimal” coverage given to travel restrictions for pregnant women and girls who need abortion care in the United States. “Do you think in any universe, if men’s right to leave the state was on the line, that would be the reaction? It would 24-hour, back-to-back cable news coverage.”
She also mentioned that although there was a lot of abortion coverage in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, after the election, “I watched that coverage drop off a cliff.” She continued, “What this country is doing to pregnant people isn’t just about poll numbers and elections. We have to demand that our humanity stop being treated like political fodder.”
She concluded, “Please tell everyone in your orbit that it is not biased journalism to tell the truth about what abortion bans are doing to this country. … And most importantly, remind them that women’s lives and freedom should never be up for debate.”
Also in attendance at the event were legendary journalist and author Katie Couric as well as award-winning filmmakers Julie Taymor, Laurie David, Paula Silver, Kim A. Snyder, Nicole Melillo, and Regina K. Scully, who was a major sponsor of the evening.
The evening ended with a champagne toast by Steinem and Morgan to the community that supports feminism, gender equality, and other civil rights.
Steinem said, “Robin, Jane, and I love bringing together so many fantastic people for this event. We deeply appreciate your support. You make it possible for us to elevate the voices of women from all walks of life to tell the powerful truth about their lives, their perspectives, and their expertise. In these challenging times, our work has never been needed more. So I’d like to make a toast. Please raise your glass in celebration of the Women’s Media Center making women visible and powerful for the last 20 years.”
Morgan added, “I hope you will join us next year as we kick off another 20 years.”
More information about the Women's Media Awards 2025
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