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Women: International
now comprise a greater proportion of
news reporters than before, they are
not enjoying equality with their male
counterparts.
Women Journalists and
Gender Sensitivity
Whether an increase in the number
of women journalists will lead to improved
coverage of women and
women’s issues in the media is highly
contested. Recent research has done
little to throw light on the matter. Although
some argue that a critical mass
of women working in the media can
and will make an imprint on media
content, others have highlighted the
need to consider the more dominant
impact of media ownership and the
prevailing culture within the media
industry.
The difficulties associated with
women’s representation in the media
cannot simply be reduced by notching
up a few percentage points in the share
of women’s time on air or in print. As
Margaret Gallagher observed in “Gender
Setting: New Agendas for Media
Monitoring and Advocacy” (London,
Zed Books 2001), “What is at stake is
not just the number of women who
appear in the media, but the weight of
their voices.” [See Gallagher’s article
on page 63.]
Evidence has, to date, been mixed.
In “Who Makes the News?” the following
information was gathered:
• In stories by female reporters, 24
percent of news subjects are women,
whereas in stories by male reporters,
only 18 percent of news subjects
are women.
• In female reporters’ coverage of
“hard” news, 15 percent of news
subjects are women, compared to
12 percent in coverage by male reporters.
• In “soft” news coverage by female
reporters, 32 percent of news subjects
are women, yet by male reporters,
27 percent are women.
Both “hard” and “soft” news stories
by female reporters clearly do have
more female news subjects than do
those by male reporters, yet the portrayal
of women in the media has not
improved dramatically. Perhaps, then,
the crucial question is, as Gallagher
states, “not who is telling the story but
how the story is told.”
The Presence and Portrayal
of Women in the News Media
One of the most startling results of
GMMP 2000 was the discovery that
women are a central focus in only 10
percent of stories. But even these stories
are rarely inspired by a concern
with women’s relationships to or views
about political, economic or social
matters. Instead, many of these stories
focus on women in stereotypical roles.
Quite common was the portrayal of
women as victims, particularly of crime.
While victims are, in general, common
currency in news programs, women
were found nearly three times more
likely to appear as victims than men.
Other stories from GMMP 2000 showed
women’s success in beauty contests or
in weight reducing competitions. A few
highlighted the more serious achievements
of women, and a sprinkling actually
addressed questions of women’s
rights or status in the political or social
world.
As Gallagher shows in her analysis of
the findings of GMMP 2000, while these
sorts of stories do give time and space
to women in the news, the content
rarely advances the featured women’s
concerns or the interests of women
overall. An extreme example comes
from Turkey where only three percent
of stories in the media focused on
women. One of those was a television
item about research into the link between
heart attacks and snoring in
women—a serious issue—yet the video
footage used to illustrate the report
showed women in bikinis posing on a
beach.
Also missing from news stories that
focus on women are the voices of the
women concerned. Though not totally
silent, their voices are heard only in the
margins of the news agenda, rather
than at its core. Frequently news accounts
miss the opportunity to broaden
the scope of their stories by including
women’s perspectives, even in cases
where those views seemed essential to
the story. One of the most striking
examples in GMMP 2000 came from a
Sudanese newspaper story about the
problems faced by young women when
they move away from home to study in
another town. The article interviewed
a male teacher and a male student, but
did not include any words or views
from a female. As Gallagher shows, this
tendency to talk about rather than to
women illustrates not only the very
real absence of women’s voices, but
the profound lack of attention paid by
the news media to the telling of
women’s stories generally.
Our monitoring efforts allow us to
scrutinize what and how the news
media are doing in regard to news
coverage of women. But they also create
a tool for action. Networks of
women are energized by the organization
and work of monitoring and once
the findings emerge, they are empowered
to promote change by the knowledge
they have acquired. While we
often hear that news is simply a reflection
of what is happening, this closeup
look, across borders and time zones,
reminds women that reflections of their
lives and their issues are still absent,
despite their increasing presence in
newsrooms. GMMP 2000 has provided
the means for us to answer some of our
questions, but what it does is raise so
many more to which answers must be
found. ■
Teresita Hermano is the director for
services and the Women’s
Programme at the World Association
for Christian Communication. Anna
Turley is the Women and Media
Programme officer. Additional
information from these reports can
be found at www.wacc.org.uk.
women@wacc.org.uk
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 79