24th November, 2015
Women make up about half the world’s population but account for less than a quarter of those featured in newspaper, radio or television news – a level which remains at the same as it was in 2010, according to a new report.
The Who Makes The News? report, released on Monday, shows that only 24 per cent of news items in newspapers, on radio or TV feature women while only 26 per cent of people in news stories on the internet and in media news tweets are women.
The report is the work of the Global Media Monitoring Project, an initiative of the World Association for Christian Communication with the support – for the past two reports – of UN Women. It is based on data from 114 countries, first collected in 1995 and at five year intervals ever since.
Rev Dr Karin Achtelstetter, general secretary of the WACC, said the portrayal of women in day-to-day journalism "does not reflect their contribution to society" and called for a "focused recommitment" from media houses, regulatory agencies, training institutions and civil society to "raise professional standards and truly provide leadership about what constitutes ethical freedom of expression".
“We have to end media sexism by 2020," Achtelstetter said at a news conference. "At this rate, it will take three-quarters of a century to reach equality in numbers. We are calling for an action plan."
She noted that one target is for newsrooms to support gender equality in 100 per cent of national public media and 40 per cent of private media in each country.
Other findings in the report show that women are more than twice as likely to be portrayed as victims than men (16 per cent compared to eight per cent), that there is a global "glass ceiling" for female news reporters with just 37 per cent of stories reported by women – the same level as a decade ago, and, that while women hold about 40 per cent of paid employment positions worldwide, according to news content, only 20 per cent of the formal labour force are women.
~ http://whomakesthenews.org/gmmp/gmmp-reports/gmmp-2015-reports
– DAVID ADAMS
