The Missing Perspectives of Women in News

"...news globally is very much still produced mainly by men, features more men, and is consumed more by men. News remains decisively biased towards men's perspectives."

This report seeks to examine women's representation in newsrooms, in the newsgathering process, and in news coverage in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), the report highlights trends in these countries with a view to identifying concrete ways to address women's marginalisation in news media.

The research methods included: a literature review of 2,286 articles and three case studies; a content analysis of 11,913 publications and 56.9 million stories; and an analysis of 74 primary surveys. The researchers also analysed Google Trends and reports undertaken by key journalistic and international organisations.

The report begins by establishing benchmarks for four indicators of gender equality that form the basis of the research and analysis outlined in the report. These are: gender diversity in the workplace and in leadership; women as sources of news expertise; news stories leading with women protagonists; and coverage of gender equality issues. The regulatory context surrounding news organisations in the six countries are also examined in detail in order to highlight the relationships between regulation and practice on the ground.

The report finds that women's representation in the news has flatlined - if not reversed - in the 21st century. Their marginalisation is clear in all areas of the news media: Women are underrepresented in newsroom governance and leadership; gender equality stories are going untold; and men remain the vast majority of quoted experts and sources. For example, although women make up half the population, they comprise 39% of journalists and just 26% of journalism leadership globally. In the six analysed countries, less than 1% of news stories cover gender equality issues. Women's voices are also underrepresented in media coverage. For example, women were quoted in only 29% of online news stories analysed in the UK in 2019. In India, they made up just 14%; on high-profile beats such as the economy, men's share of voices was up to 31 times higher than women's. As explained in the report, "Patriarchal norms are at the heart of the existing invisible barriers for women in news. These norms inhibit the impact of gender equality legislation in news organizations; enable the continuing dominance of men's perspectives in news-making; amplify these perspectives through men's news consumption; and limit women's presence in news stories as news protagonists and experts, with the result that gender parity remains constantly out of reach."

To identify possible learnings and solutions, the report examines three case studies that highlight ways of achieving behavioural change: (i) nudging to create a new social norm, driven by a powerful "change-making" messenger within an organisation, as exemplified by the BBC 50:50 project (UK); (ii) using debiasing technology-powered techniques among journalists who are open to change, demonstrated by FollowBias (US); and (iii) gender balancing initiatives championed from the top of the organisation and from the ground up, as can be seen at T-Systems (South Africa).

Based on the findings, the report sets out 50 recommendations, which have been organised into the following categories:

• Recommendations focusing on organisational resources: Diversity in the workplace - They include, for example, ensuring that a comprehensive suite of policies addressing gender equality is in place and under the responsibility of a nominated senior leader. Childcare policies, flexible working provision, and efforts to address gender pay gaps are also recommended.
• Recommendations focusing on newsgathering: Women as sources of news expertise - They include compiling lists of women contributors and experts for journalists to use and measuring the proportion of women protagonists featured in stories to reveal how gender-balanced or otherwise a news organisation's content is.
• Recommendations focusing on news outputs: Women protagonists - They include using the broadest possible definition of a woman protagonist to include both individuals and groups, capturing the proportion of women protagonists in different news beats, and working towards increasing the proportion of women protagonists in agenda-setting news beats such as politics and the economy.
• Recommendations focusing on news outputs: Coverage of gender equality - Here, journalists should be made aware of the existing bias towards featuring more men than women in gender equality stories. This bias should be redressed by actively looking for women protagonists to lead on gender equality coverage. Education and training for journalists should also be provided to facilitate multi-perspective gender equality thinking, leading to more impactful coverage that links multiple gender equality themes into an overarching narrative.
• Key strategic recommendations include introducing and measuring news consumption and impact-based indicators to measure women's engagement with news, the impacts of news on women at an individual and societal level, and how these impacts change in response to a more gender-balanced news offer. Tackling the representation of women in ownership and governance structures by introducing an indicator aimed at achieving gender parity on governing boards is another recommendation.

The final part of the report summarises eight areas that academic scholars, whose work formed part of the literature review, have identified as knowledge gaps and that could benefit from further academic research. They include, for example, creating a better understanding of the impact that changes in one element of the news value chain have on all the others, as well as developing a more robust understanding of the influence of society on journalism.

The report is supplemented with a news providers' gender parity checklist, as well as a presentation that tells the story in the report through slides.

Editor's note: A special COVID-19-focused report provides a similar analysis on how COVID-19 has impacted gender equality in the news media. Click here to download "The Missing Perspectives of Women in COVID-19 News".

Click here to download the 29-page Executive Summary of this report in PDF format.