Progress for women in news media, remains elusive – Report

A report released by the Global Media Monitoring Project says in 2015, progress towards news representation that acknowledges women’s participation in economic life, remained elusive.

This was according to the report released on Monday in New York by the UN Women Chief of Communications and Advocacy, Nanette Braun, and Karin Achtelstetter of the GMMP.

The results, Achtelstetter said, were based on data gathered by volunteer teams in 114 countries, who monitored 22,136 stories published, broadcast or tweeted by 2,030 distinct media houses, written or presented by 26,010 journalists

The GMMP, she said, was the world’s largest and longest-running research and advocacy initiative for gender equality in and through the news media.

The report, entitled: “Gender inequality in the news 1995-2015,” argued that “the rate of progress towards media gender parity has almost ground to a halt over the past five years”.

The gender gap, it said, was narrowest in stories on science and health.

The report showed that “journalistic gender lens” in source selection is not only male centred, but it is also skewed towards a certain kind of masculinity when selecting interviewees for all types of views, from “expert” opinion to “ordinary” person testimonies.

It further added that younger presenters on screen are predominantly females, but the scales tip dramatically at 50 years old when men begin to dominate the news-anchoring scene.

It showed that women as news reporters are most present on radio, at 41 per cent and least in print news, at 35 per cent.

It stated that in 10 years, women’s share as reporters had dropped.

The report further showed that there was a statistically significant gender difference in source selection by female and male reporters.

It showed that 14 per cent of stories by female reporters focus centrally on women, in contrast to nine per cent of stories by their male counterparts.

It stated that nine per cent of stories evoke gender inequality issues, more than double the percentage documented 10 years ago.

The gap, the report added, was widest in news about politics and government in which women are only 16 per cent of the people in the stories.

In fact it stated that in 10 years, there has been no progress in the proportion of political news stories that clearly challenge gender stereotypes, while stereotype appear to have increased in social and legal news, among others.