Women’s views and voices marginalised in world’s news media, survey

[from KUNA, the Kuwait News Service]

by Hosny Emam

LONDON, Feb 15 (KUNA) -- Although women constitute 52 percent of the world’s population, they make up only 21 percent of people featured in the news, according to a comprehensive survey published here Wednesday.

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) report for 2005 entitled “Who Makes the News?” covered 76 countries in which a total of 12,893 news stories were monitored on TV, radio and in newspapers.

Launching the findings of the report at the Foreign Press Association here, GMMP activists said that women are most under represented in radio, where they are only 17 percent of news subjects as compared with 22 percent in TV and 21 percent in newspapers.

The London-based GMMP is an independent group which focuses on gender and communication activities around the world.

Among other findings disclosed is the fact that men’s voices dominate in hard news as they are the majority of news subjects in all story topics.

Even when women do feature in the news they are more likely to be found in “soft” stories such as celebrity and arts, where they make up 28 percent of news subjects and least likely to be found in “hard” news stories about politics and government (14 percent) and economy (20 percent).

In addition, 86 percent of all people featured in news stories as spokespersons are men.

Men also make up 83 percent of all experts.

Another conclusion of the survey is that women are more than twice as likely to be portrayed as victims than men.

Besides, news is still mainly reported and presented by men, and the only exception is among TV presenters.

Fifty-seven percent of TV news stories are presented by women. Elsewhere women are a minority.

GMMP said that this inbalance is most evident in newspapers where only 29 percent of newspaper items are written by female reporters.

The GMMP first conducted its survey in 1995 and then again in 2000 and then in 2005.

GMMP is coordinated by non-governmental organisations which promote communication for social change

The data for 2005 was collected through the voluntary efforts of hundreds of individuals and organisations, including gender and media activists, grass roots academics and students of communication, as well as journalists’ associations.

The report highlighted that 96 percent of news stories worldwide do not focus on issues of gender equality and inequalities.