African Woman and Child Feature Service

Women see modest gains in world news media portrayal,

Coverage still betrays significant gender bias

The Global Media Monitoring report being launched today reveals that women are still significantly underrepresented and misrepresented in news media coverage, according to Global Media Monitoring Project research in 108 countries coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication, despite significant change since the project began 15 years ago.

76% of the people heard or read about in the world’s news are male. The world seen in news media remains largely a male one.

The GMMP monitored 1,365 newspapers, television and radio stations and Internet news sites, 17,795 news stories and 38,253 persons in the news in 108 countries with 82% of the world’s people.

The report Who Makes the News? The Global Media Monitoring Project 2010 was released today in Arabic , English, French and Spanish, along with numerous regional and national reports.

24% of people in the news are female, compared to 17% in 1995.  44% of persons providing popular opinion in news stories are female compared to 34% in 2005.

• News media show significant gender bias with 46% of news stories reinforcing gender stereotypes.
• 13% of news stories focus centrally on women.
• Women in occupations outside the home are not represented in proportion to their real presence.
• Expert commentary is overwhelmingly male with only one female in every five experts.
• The age of women in the news is mentioned twice as often and family status almost four times as often as for men.

Today female reporters are responsible for 37% of stories compared to 28% fifteen years ago, and their stories challenge gender stereotypes twice as often as stories by male reporters.

Gender bias in Internet news is similar and in some respects even more intense than that found in the traditional news media.

Even though the Africa GMMP 2010 regional report shows that there has been slight increase of the presence of women media in the continent which stands at 28%. The figure is still low as compared to other countries in the world.  Despite the low presence of women, there is remarkably improvement in the presence of women in the media when the 2010 data is compared with the 2005 findings of 21% and a further down of 17% in 1995.  There has been positive achievement in attaining gender-balance in the news that has for decades been dominated by the men. Women’s visibility as sources of news has mainly been boosted by their involvement in stories on science and health (46%),  crime and violence (40%), economy (34%), social and legal (33%), politics and government (32%), others (22%) and celebrity, arts and sports (17%).

But Kenya is doing badly when it come to Gender reporting in the region. The Kenya GMMP country report shows that there is poor presence of women in both print and electronic media. Women’s voices in Kenya media are relatively absent as overall presence of women voices as subjects in the news in Kenya accounting for only 19% of all the news compared to 81% for men. The distribution of news subjects by female across the various media medium are: print 9%, radio 0% and TV 25%.  Women as sources of news in Kenya only contribute to 16% of news items compared to 84% for men. The number of female news subjects quoted as sources of information in stories in the local, national, and international affairs in the newspapers varies greatly with women contributing to only 17% of the national, 29% of local and 18% of international news in Kenyan print.

GMMP research in Kenya and East Africa was coordinated by African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC).Media monitored include all mainstream media in print and electronic.

The 2010 report contains a plan of action for media professionals and others committed to gender-ethical news media.

The GMMP is the largest and longest running research and advocacy initiative on fair and balanced gender representation in the news media. It is coordinated by WACC, a global network of communicators promoting communication for social change, in collaboration with data analyst Media Monitoring Africa, and with support from the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

Full reports/more information: www.whomakesthenews.org

Get the report