Verónica Franco: “Media and language are tools for transformation. Women and gender-divers individuals’ experiences need to be named to be recognized and heard.”

^{Verónica Franco in Panama City for the WYDE | Women’s Leadership Regional Convening. Photo: UN Women/Jose Daniel Espinosa.} 

Working in feminist communications and advocacy, Verónica sees media not simply as a profession, but as a powerful political tool. The creation of Pícara emerged from a sense of exclusion and the need to confront violence, challenge stereotypes, and reshape public narratives around women and gender-diverse people. When Verónica and her classmates graduated with degrees in communication, traditional media environments felt unwelcoming and unsafe. “It was as if we didn’t belong there,” she recalls, and participation often meant exposure to “multiple forms of violence.” Rather than accepting those conditions, they decided to create a feminist communication space that could operate differently — one that would actively work to “break stereotypes and debunk some myths.”

What united the founders of Pícara was a shared belief that communication could drive social change. They connected with other feminist colleagues who viewed media as “a tool for transformation,” and from that collective vision, Pícara was born.

Central to Verónica’s work is the power of language. “We focus primarily on the use of language as a tool for transformation,” she explains, emphasizing how words shape how experiences are named, understood, and addressed. In Argentina, feminist movements have long fought to change the narratives surrounding violence against women. One of the most significant shifts was moving away from describing the murder of women as crimes of passion to naming them as femicides.

That change, Verónica notes, was transformative. When violence was framed as a crime of passion, it was often treated as something natural or inevitable. Naming femicide made visible the structural nature of the violence and clarified the responsibility of the State to prevent it. “To move from one word to another,” she says, “made it visible that the State could reverse that and prevent the murder of women.”

Social norms have also shaped Verónica’s own leadership journey. As a young woman, she has often experienced being underestimated. “Every day we have to prove that we know what we’re doing, that we’re capable. It’s exhausting” she reflects. At the same time, feminist spaces have helped establish a powerful counter-norm, one rooted in collective care. “A norm that has already been established in feminist groups is that we should never do anything alone,” she says. “We are always accompanied.”

This principle of accompaniment extends to how Pícara approaches alliances. For Verónica, feminism is not embedded automatically in institutions or media organizations — and can reside with individuals. “The media are not inherently feminist, nor are institutions or governments,” she explains. That understanding has allowed Pícara to build alliances across sectors and genders through people, including working alongside men who are committed to human rights and equality. With workshops and collaborative spaces, she has seen how shared learning can break down resistance and open pathways toward more inclusive narratives.

On violence against women in public life, she believes that “the issue of digital violence needs to be put on the public agenda,” she says. In Argentina, she explains, online abuse and harassment targeting women and gender-diverse people have risen sharply, with tangible consequences. “This is having a direct impact on the willingness of women and dissidents to participate in politics.” For Verónica, digital violence is not an individual problem but a structural one which requires collective action. “We need to focus our attention on this and build networks to support each other,” she stresses, particularly to protect feminist leaders who represent women’s interests in political spaces and push for regulatory change.