From Outrage to Opportunity: How to Include the Missing Perspectives of Women of All Colors in News Leadership and Coverage

"In both editorial leadership roles and in news coverage, women continue to be significantly underrepresented in an industry persistently dominated by men. While women in news have it hard, women of color have it even harder. In countries with multi-racial populations, women of color experience greater exclusion in the news industry."

This solutions-focused report examines the realities facing women of all colours in news leadership and coverage in six countries: India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Hosted by Internews and published by Luba Kassova together with her consultancy AKAS, the report showcases research carried out in the six countries and presents 12 solutions themes to help news organisations become more representative. It reveals especially that the broader engagement of women could revitalise the news industry and generate billions of dollars of additional revenue.

'From Outrage to Opportunity' follows on from two previous reports, 'The Missing Perspectives of Women in News' and 'The Missing Perspectives of Women in COVID-19 News', commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (see Related Summaries, below). The findings in this sequel report are based on research in the same six countries, using data accessed from multiple quantitative methodologies to derive insights and formulate solutions. Researchers also conducted in-depth interviews with 41 senior news editors/editors-in-chief and trailblazers from around the world.

The report has five parts:

• Part 1: News Leadership - how to close the gender diversity and inclusion gap in news leadership.
• Part 2: News Coverage - how to include the missing perspectives of women in news coverage.
• Part 3: Global News Initiatives - news initiatives shaping the progress already made in the industry.
• Part 4: Business Case - the business opportunity that women represent for the news industry.
• Part 5: Solutions - a summary of strategic/operational solutions for overcoming existing barriers for women in news.

In addition to highlighting new findings, the focus in this report is on identifying solutions and looking forward in order to support the news industry in making much-needed progress. In particular, it seeks to offer solutions to removing two of the longstanding challenges identified in the previous two reports: (i) women's underrepresentation and cultural exclusion in news leadership at the top of news organisations/in the highest-profile beats and (ii) their invisibility in news coverage/storytelling. The report also highlights three new insights: (i) Women are still very much on the margins of editorial decision-making in the highest-profile news beats, such as business, politics, and foreign affairs; (ii) women news leaders of colour suffer extraordinary marginalisation in countries with multi-racial populations - i.e., South Africa, the UK, and the US; and (iii) there is a huge gap in the coverage of issues that affect women disproportionately. A meagre 0.02% of news coverage globally focuses on seven substantive gaps between men and women in pay, power, safety, authority, confidence, health, and ageism.

The report makes the case that to accelerate change, women's missing or muted voices must be amplified at each stage of the news value chain: i.e., in news leadership and newsrooms, in newsgathering, in news coverage, and in news consumption. Moreover, to improve gender and racial equity in news, organisations should drive change at the individual level, but also at two other levels: the systemic and organisational. In relation to the consumption of news, in particular, the report makes a business case for gender equality by highlighting the potential cumulative revenue opportunity for the global newspaper industry if the addressable gender consumption gap was completely closed.

The 12 solutions themes are intended to change the status quo and improve women's representation and inclusion in news leadership and also to create more balanced and inclusive news coverage that engages more female and racially diverse audiences. Each solution theme offers recommendations around three key areas: raising awareness, removing barriers, and creating new habits. The solution themes are:

1. Consolidate efforts at an industry level to enhance progress.
2. Conduct a comprehensive gender diversity audit across all elements of the news operation.
3. Make the gender diversity strategy explicit.
4. Improve the representation of all women in news leadership.
5. Improve specifically the representation of women of colour in news leadership.
6. Improve the inclusion of all women in decision-making in news leadership.
7. Improve specifically the inclusion of women of colour in decision-making in news leadership.
8. Improve representation and inclusion of women in newsrooms.
9. Improve the representation of all women in news coverage.
10. Improve the storytelling about women of all colours.
11. Improve the portrayal of all women in news coverage.
12. Reframe the case for change to include the business opportunity of reaching out to women audiences.

In addition to the above-mentioned sections (five parts), the report includes the following as separate documents that can be downloaded:

• Case Studies - Nine case studies showcase trailblazing organisations consulted as part of the research, such as Bloomberg, the Guardian, and The New York Times.
• Country Factsheets - Factsheets on India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the US examine the status of women in the news and the challenges they face in each country.
• News Trends in Coverage of Women - This standalone digital mini-report looks at the online news coverage of women in news/news leadership.
• Implementation Guide - A 12-step guide to implementing the 12 solution themes outlined in the report.
• Guide to the Report - Seeks to enable readers to decide which parts to focus on if time constraints prevent them from reading the whole report.

Click here to download individual sections of the report and accompanying documents.