Am I a feminist?

By Monika Kennedy, BILD (Germany)

Am I a feminist? This question had, until the WACC (World Association for Christian Communication) /GMMP (Global Media Monitoring Project) press briefing, never crossed my mind. As a very independent and generally happy go lucky person, this sort of fundamental issue had not been one of my thoughts. Not until now. Things were about to change. I was at the Foreign Press Association listening to an outline of a study by WACC. The GMMP is the biggest study of its kind. More than 13,000 news items in 76 countries were examined for their gender representation.

25,000 news sources i.e. the subjects of the stories or the people interviewed, had been examined. A grand total of nearly 40,000 people had been reported on in the news on the Media Monitoring Day. But how many women actually make the news? That was the big question. Margaret Gallagher, the eloquent consultant and data analyst of the project, started to talk. She said, "Women constitute 52% of the world's population yet make up only 21% of people featured in the news.

Women are most under represented in radio, 17%, on TV 22% and in newspapers with 21%.Men do the hard news, woman the soft. Even in soft news, women are present with 28% only. Hard news is presented by 14% of woman; reports on the economy are done by 20%. Men dominate as spokespersons and experts by 86%.

Women are more than twice as likely to be portrayed as victims than men." And so it went on. The under representation of women was laid bare in less than fifteen minutes. My mind started to race. Why are so few women in the news? How is this justifiable in this day and age? Had the 'gender train' passed me by? The questions kept coming.

How can I, as a woman, make a difference? What could I do? It transpired the 8th of March is World Women's Day. As I was listening to Margaret talking, it clicked. Why don't I suggest challenging the beliefs in men?

Back in the office I suggested to make our paper, BILD, truly representative of women's position in our society. Why not take Germany's biggest tabloid as a forum for gender representation? We called the editor-in-Chief.

His comment: "Great idea, I like it!"

The ball started rolling. BILD would have a soft layout on this day and the editors would all be women. All news would have a woman's background and theme.

Still, that wasn't enough, it seemed that the study had hit the very centre of my inner beliefs and values. Looking around me, I was suddenly aware of how few women are actually in this field of media.

Since September last year I have been studying an evening study course at Birkbeck, University of London. An inspiring woman, Dr. Isabelle Fremeaux, brought the course, Media and Business Applications into life in 2002. I gave Isabelle the WACC CD on 'Who's making the news?' In our next study session, she disseminated the data and information sheet of GMMP 2005. And our class of 27 students was now learning about gender (mis) representation.

Although only the start of a bit of awareness, hopefully the study will be examined further by more students in years to come.

Will this truly make a difference? If we don't try, we might as well give up. But change can be made. The tipping point is not determined by the masses, or indeed only by men, but through a very small number of people.

Perhaps in my case, an invisible finger pointed to me that day, the extent of the under representation of women in media. One fifth of all news made by women, when women represent half the world's population, is simply not good enough.