What you probably already know: Half of the planet’s population is being ignored by the news. The world’s largest study on gender representation in news media, the UN-backed Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), estimates women are seen, heard, or spoken about in just 26% of broadcast and print news — a statistic that has barely changed in the last 15 years. Women’s representation in media has improved by a mere nine points in the 30 years since 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, an agenda hailed by the UN as the most comprehensive and transformative global framework for the advancement of women’s rights. The GMMP’s findings, published every five years using data from more than160 countries, are based on an analysis of the news cycle from a single “ordinary” day — this year, it was May 6.
Why? Progress toward gender equality in news media was making slow but steady gains in the years following the Beijing Platform for Action, but started to stagnate around 2010. Momentum continued to fizzle with each subsequent year. Today, just six in every 100 people who are seen, heard or spoken about across traditional and digital news worldwide are from racial, ethnic, religious and other minority groups. Of these, 38% are women. The odds of a woman from a minority group being represented in the news are less than one in 10. North American news media has made the biggest gains toward parity, with women making up four out of 10 subjects and sources. Outlets in Asia and the Middle East have the worst scores — only 19% of all people who are seen, heard or spoken about are women.
What it means: Gender-based violence barely makes headlines. Less than two in 100 global news articles talk about gender-based violence, which impacts women at an overwhelmingly disproportionate rate compared to men, yet men make up a little over 50% of people in stories about it. About a third of these men are criminals — the rest are typically lawyers, police or politicians, while women are most likely celebrities, homemakers and children. News media continues to embrace men as voices of authority while boxing women into unremarkable roles as givers of popular opinions and eyewitness accounts rather than knowledgeable experts. While 41% of reporters in legacy news articles are women — up from 28% in 1995 — only two in every 100 stories clearly challenge gender stereotypes, and journalism that counters these biases is at its lowest level in three decades of monitoring. Online media outlets are slightly more likely to talk about women, likely because they employ a larger share of women reporters. Research shows that women reporters are more likely to select women news subjects than their male counterparts.
What happens next: The GMMP’s report concludes that if nothing changes, major progress toward gender equality is unlikely — though it notes that the impact of digital media on the advancement of women’s rights is fluid and complex. “When women are missing, democracy is incomplete,” said Kirsi Madi, UN Women deputy executive director. “In today’s backlash against gender equality, these findings are both a wake-up call and a call to action. Without women’s voices, there is no full story, no fair democracy, no lasting security and no shared future.”
— Story by Cambrie Juarez
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