The readers' editor on... the media's missing women
By Stephen Pritchard
Sunday February 19, 2006
Women - half the world's population - are barely present in the faces seen, voices heard and opinions expressed in the world's media, claimed a report published last week. Who Makes the News? made shaming reading.
Right around the world, for every woman who appears in the news there are four men. In not one major area of news do women outnumber men as newsmakers. In politics, which dominates news internationally, only 14 per cent of the subjects are women.
When women do make the news, it is as celebrities (where they are 42 per cent of subjects), homemakers (75 per cent) or students (51 per cent). Global Media Monitoring Project had teams in 76 countries who watched television, read the papers and listened to the radio on one random day - 16 February last year - the most extensive gender research of news media undertaken. They monitored 12,893 stories.
Their findings are depressing. Expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male. Men represent 83 per cent of experts and 86 per cent of spokespeople. Women appear most in a personal capacity: as eyewitnesses (30 per cent), giving personal views (31 per cent) or representing popular opinion (34 per cent).
Age is crucial. Men go on making news into their fifties and sixties; indeed, nearly half of all male news subjects are over 50. Older women are almost invisible: nearly three-quarters of female news subjects are under 50.
Women are more than twice as likely as men to be seen as victims: 19 per cent of female news subjects, compared with 8 per cent of males.
However, women are much more likely to appear in pictures than men. In crime, violence or disaster stories, pictures of women are frequently employed for dramatic effect.
In newsrooms around the world, 37 per cent of journalists are women, and yet newspapers are lagging behind broadcasting, with only 29 per cent female staff worldwide.
Female reporters predominate in two topics: weather reports on TV and radio (52 per cent) and stories on poverty, housing and welfare (51 per cent). Only 32 per cent of political news is reported by women. Men predominate when it comes to 'hard' news.
So what's to be done? At the launch of Who Makes the News? I joined a panel, chaired by Channel 4 New's Jon Snow, to discuss this issue with 100 representatives from women's groups, NGOs and the world's press. It was quickly pointed out that if women's representation increased only at the current rate, it would take 160 years to reach 50 per cent.
Over the next five years, the project aims to get more muscular, increasing its lobbying of press and broadcasters and urging change in the training of journalists.
The choice of story angle, the choice of interviewee, the use of language and the choice of images - all have a bearing on the messages that emerge in the news. Often, the sin is not of commission, but omission. 'Where are the women?' is the burning question and 50 per cent of the world's population is waiting for the answer.
Special report
Gender issues
Useful links
Fawcett society
gender.org
Press for change
Government links
Equal opportunities commission
Cabinet Office Women and Equality Unit
DfES Gender and Achievement
The women's library
Temporarily available at: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1713040,00.html
Source: The Observer
