A snapshot of gender representation

Tuesday, 10 November 2009, was an ordinary news day in most parts of the world. No single news story dominated the news agenda in most countries, although special events received more attention than others in some.  What was different about the day was that, unbeknown to the media, volunteers in 130 countries across the world spent much of the day poring over national newspapers, listening to radio newscasts and watching television news.  

As participants in the fourth Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the world’s largest and longest-running longitudinal research and action initiative on gender in the news media, they were engaged in observing and analysing the day’s news and recording their findings on a number of selected indicators.  The overarching purpose of the GMMP, coordinated by the Canada-based World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), is to promote fair and balanced gender representation in and through the news media on the basis of information and insights gathered through systematic, periodic media monitoring. 

The preliminary report of the November 2009 initiative was released in New York on 2 March 2010, in time for the ongoing 54^th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, which is reviewing progress in implementing the critical areas of concern in the Platform for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing 15 years ago.  Among the 12 key issues listed in the 1995 document is Women and the Media, elaborated upon in Section J.

The new, preliminary GMMP report provides a snapshot of the representation and portrayal of women and men in news media around the world, based on a sample of 42 out of the 130 participating countries. The findings in the report are based on an analysis of 6,902 news items containing 14,044 news subjects, including people interviewed for/about the news, in 42 countries spread across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean region, the Pacific Islands and Europe. Significantly, the data for North America was not available for inclusion in the preliminary report. The complete, definitive results of the 4^th GMMP will be presented in the final report, expected to be published in September 2010.

Despite recent changes in the media landscape in many countries of the world, the agenda of the news media during the international day of monitoring in November 2009 was not very different from what was recorded by the last GMMP, conducted in 2005, in terms of the hierarchy of priorities. Politics/government continues to dominate the biggest chunk of coverage (27% of the total number of stories), crime/violence comes second at 20%, and the economy third at 18%.

The latest edition of the GMMP has revealed that less than a quarter (24%) of the people heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news worldwide is female. This represents just a 7% increase in 15 years:  the first GMMP report in 1995 recorded that only 17% of the people in the news were women. The increase in women as news subjects was even smaller in topics that rank high on the agenda of the news media – 4% in stories on ‘politics & government’ and just 1% in stories on the economy. 

To make matters worse, a significant component of the 3% increase in women in the news between 2005 and 2010 is apparently due to the notable increase in women as providers of popular opinion, rather than as experts. Women have achieved near parity among those supposedly reflecting the view of ordinary citizens in news stories (47% female, 53% male).  However, they continue to be under-represented as experts (19%) and spokespersons (18%).  In other words, less than one out of every five experts interviewed by news media is female.

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The latest round of GMMP monitoring found some improvement in the ratio of women to men who are central in news stories, with 16% of all stories focusing specifically on women. This marks an overall increase from the 10% recorded in the 2005 report. The top topics in which women are central pertain to women and politics, violence and crime. There seems to be a significant increase in women-centred stories in the area of politics/government (from 8% in 2005 to 18% in 2010) and a marginal improvement in news relating to the economy (from 3% of stories in 2005 to 7% in 2010).

Nevertheless, the percentage of stories in which women are not central far outweighs the percentage of those in which they are.  In addition, the preliminary results show that women are not at all central in several news topics that are of vital importance to them, such as labour (employment, unemployment) and poverty (housing, social welfare, financial assistance/aid).

It appears that women are still five times as likely as men to be portrayed in their roles as wives, mothers, and so on: 19% of women appearing in the news are identified by their family status while only 4% of men in the news are described in that way.  Similarly, with regard to the occupations of news subjects, the categories in which women make it over the 50% mark are home-maker/parent and student/pupil/school child.  The next few categories in which women are reasonably well-represented (just below 50%) are: villager or resident engaged in unspecified occupation; office or service worker/non-management worker in office, store, restaurant/catering; and unemployed.  The only other categories in which women make a respectable showing are:  celebrity, artist, actor, writer, singer, radio or television personality; and child, young person (below 18 years). 

According to the preliminary report of the GMMP 2010, "The picture painted through the news on the occupations of news subjects is discordant with the reality. The news presents a world in which men outnumber women in almost all occupational categories, with the highest disparity being in the professions – for instance, health (62% are men), legal (83%), science (80%) and government (83%). In reality, women’s share in all professions is much higher than depicted. The news presents a skewed picture of a world in which women are almost absent in positions of authority or responsibility outside the home."

The report also provides a picture of women’s participation and contribution as media professionals. The preliminary results indicate that the percentage of stories by female reporters has increased since 2005 in print (to 35%) and news television (to 44%) but decreased in radio newscasts (27%). However, the percentage of stories by male reporters

continues to surpass that by female reporters in all three media forms.

The preliminary results indicate that news, in general, continues to be overwhelmingly reported by men, while news in the so-called ‘soft’ areas of coverage (arts, entertainment and lifestyle) are  more likely to be reported by women. However, there appears to be a rise in the percentage of stories reported by women in the areas of crime and violence, media and sports, and social and legal issues, besides celebrity-related news. 

The preliminary results also reveal that news stories by female reporters tend to have

more female news subjects than stories by male reporters:  while women make up over a quarter (26%) of news subjects in stories by female journalists, they constitute less than a fifth (19%) of news subjects in stories by male journalists. The results also suggest that news stories by female reporters are almost twice as likely to challenge gender stereotypes as stories by male reporters (11% by the former compared to 6% by the latter).

However, the difference between male and female media professionals in this respect seems less significant than a related fact uncovered by the monitoring.  According to the preliminary report of the GMMP, almost one half (48%) of all news stories reinforce gender stereotypes, while only 8% challenge such stereotypes. In other words, ten years into the new millennium, news stories are six times more likely to reinforce gender stereotypes than to challenge them.

What is more, only 12% of news stories were found to highlight issues of gender equality or inequality.  The good news is that the percentage of stories that shed light on an aspect of gender equality or inequality has tripled in the last five years. The bad news is that stories that miss the opportunity to highlight such issues are still by far more numerous.

For more information about the GMMP and the full text of the preliminary report, visit the Who Makes the News website (http://www.whomakesthenews.org/).

The GMMP in India

On monitoring day (10 November 2009) the front pages of most national newspapers across India were dominated by the unseemly spectacle in the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra, where four MLAs assaulted a colleague from another party for taking his oath in Hindi rather than in Marathi.  Several newspapers also carried news of the chaos in the High Court of Karnataka, where lawyers were agitating against the Chief Justice who had been accused of corruption (in the form of acquisition of land in another state by unfair means).

The ongoing troubles of the government of Karnataka, with the widening fissures in the ruling party, also claimed space on many front pages.  The release of "The India Gender Gap Review 2009" produced by the World Economic Summit found some space on some front pages.  In several places, television and radio news was over-run by the results of local by-elections. 

The original sample selected by GMMP volunteers in different parts of the country comprised 26 daily newspapers in 10 Indian languages (including English), 12 TV news channels in 6 languages, and 6 radio news bulletins in 4 languages aired by different stations of All India Radio (the only radio broadcaster in the country currently allowed to disseminate news and current affairs).  The attempt was to ensure that a cross-section of media in different parts of the country in different languages was monitored so that the sample was as representative as possible of the diversity and plurality of the Indian media.

However, some volunteers fell by the wayside and others submitted coding sheets that could not be used – so the final sample was smaller:  20 dailies, 11 TV news bulletins, and 5 radio bulletins.  The print media covered included newspapers in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya and Tamil;  the TV sample included private news channels as well as Doordarshan in English, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam;  radio was represented by AIR bulletins in English, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam.

Approximately 22 monitors finally participated in the monitoring exercise on 10 November (down from close to 60 volunteers in the initial stages of the process).  However, the number of persons actually involved with the GMMP monitoring in India is higher since several volunteers involved students in the monitoring.  Among the volunteers, about 14 monitored only newspapers and two monitored only television news while the remaining did a combination of all three media forms. 

A.J.