To break the bias of a single story, everyone has a role to play.

Document Women is committed to playing the part of making the media more gender-sensitive. So what have we been doing for the past year? The short answer is simple. We were Documenting Women.

Well, for the longer answer, we’ve been doing the painstaking work of changing the scope of feminising the very male mainstream media. When Australian media surveyed over 13,000 articles of about 7.4 million words in total, the word “he” appeared 3.4 times more than “she”. Imagine how much worse it is for a community like ours, so patriarchal, no one has bothered to do the research yet.

Document Women is doing the vital work of ensuring women are not erased from the history book and that women’s issues remain at the front burner of socio-political conversations. As we grow, we solicit your support in leveraging the power of storytelling to change how men and women interact with history, pop culture and politics.

Document Women has published over 300 articles in its first year, produced a podcast series and a short film.

For us as Africans, documentation is survival. It’s how we live forever, through the words of our children’s mouths and the pages of history books.

We want to celebrate this milestone to mark the passage of time and recognise how our purpose has shaped our brand. We look forward to the future and what it holds.

I say this as a company’s CEO dedicated to documenting women; I long for a world where we no longer treat women’s stories as a niche, where documenting women is an integral part of mainstream storytelling.

I’m grateful for the continued support from the British High Commission. In addition, I want to personally appreciate Seyi Oluyole, founder of the Dreamcatchers Academy, with whom we’ve partnered on this project. Seyi has been doing the vital work of changing the trajectory of the girls’ lives at the academy, empowering them with education and dance.

These brilliant young women; Temitayo Ibrahim, Oluwalobunmi Kehinde, Oluwalobunmi Nifemi Olubowale, Wahab Zainab, Amarachi Mofunaya and Imoleayo Oshinleye, who applied themselves to this project and are women giants in the making themselves.

We want to thank the team for their hard work;

Kudirat Ikharo – photographer

Sarah Etta – Creative Director

Jubilian Ngaruwa – Cinematographer

Omolola Abidoye – Stylist

Johnson Deborah – production manager.

Over the past 12 months, over almost 1 million readers, subscribers, followers, and evangelists. Thank you for believing in our vision and our growth.

Document Women is more than a brand, it’s a call to action, and each one of you has answered.

We love you, thank you so much.

Signed,

Kiki Mordi

Chief Executive Officer, Document Women