Gender and Media Baseline Study 2003

Black women, who represent 45 percent of the South African population, account for only five percent of news sources, according to a new study released on August 7 2003. The results of the South Africa Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) showed that Black women account for only six percent of media practitioners in South Africa.

The GMBS a study on gender in the editorial content of the media ever to be undertaken regionally or globally - found that women constitute 19 percent of known news sources in South Africa, compared to 17 percent in the rest of the Southern Africa.

The study is a joint initiative of Gender Links, a Southern African NGO that promotes gender equality in and through the media, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) that advocates media freedom, diversity and pluralism. The Media Monitoring Project (MMP) served as technical advisors and carried out the monitoring in South Africa, which because of its high media density, accounted for one third of the 25 000 news items monitored.

The Sunday Times, with 29 percent women sources is at the top of the league, with the contemporary youth radio station, YFM (8 percent women sources) at the bottom. The study stresses however that numbers are only part of the story. The qualitative research showed that women are both under represented and misrepresented in the media in passive, subordinate roles or as sex objects.

Other significant findings are that:

The only occupational category in which women predominate as sources was as beauty contestants, sex workers and homemakers. Women's voices were least sourced in the sports and mining categories. Women constitute 31 percent of members of parliament and cabinet, yet only accounted for eight percent of sources. Both in the region and South Africa, economic and political coverage accounted for about a quarter and sport 21 percent of coverage, compared to gender equality that accounted for two percent of the total. Women have made the most strides in the electronic media accounting for 44 percent of TV presenters and radio reporters, but only 29 percent of print journalists.