Published on
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 by the Inter Press Service, reposted
from Common Dreams.
Women – Half the
Population, A Fifth of the News
by
Sanjay Suri
see in news subjects is that whilst women make up 52 percent of the world’s
population, they make up only 21 percent of news subjects,” Anna Turley from
the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) told IPS. WACC is a
non-governmental organisation that promotes communication for social change.
But the number of women behind the news is rising, she said.
”Encouragingly, when we look at the men and women who report the news, we see a
steady increase in the number of news stories reported by women,” she said.
That has gone up from 31 to 37 percent from 2000 to 2005.
The findings
are based on news items appearing on a single day (Feb. 16, 2005). Almost 13,000
news items were surveyed on that day in 76 countries.
But through the
five years, the number of women as subjects remained more or less the same. Does
that mean that more women are behind news reports but still not writing about
women?
”I think that is one possible conclusion but global data shows
that in stories reported by women, there is a greater chance that there will be
more women news subjects in those stories,” said Turley.
Within the 21
percent space they get as subjects, they do not always appear for the best
reasons. ”They are more likely to be found in what is referred to as the soft
end of the news spectrum, celebrity stories, social and legal issues,” said
Turley. ”They are much less present in the politics and economics stories which
of course make up the bulk of the news agenda.”
Within media ”what we
are seeing is that print media lags far behind radio and television,” Turley
said. Only 29 percent of the women behind the news in print are women, relative
to the average of 37 percent.
In television news reporting women
outnumber men. The study says in the reports scrutinised from the 76 countries,
58 percent were by women.
But that is not necessarily pleasing WACC.
”What we see is that the number of women below the age of 35 in television is
far greater,” Turley said. ”Interestingly, past the age of 35 we see far more
men reporting the news than women. That of course suggests that appearance and
age are a criteria for women journalists and not for men.”
The Global
Media Monitoring Project as it is called was first conducted in 1995 and then
again in 2000 and 2005. Besides finding little improvement in representation of
women as news subjects, the survey showed also that the pattern can be similar
in countries as dissimilar as
Some other findings:
-
Women are
least represented in radio where they are only 17 percent of the subjects
compared to 22 percent in television and 21 percent in newspapers. -
As many as
86 percent of people featured as spokespersons were men. -
Women are
more than twice as likely to be portrayed as victims than men. -
Female
reporters are more likely to cover the ‘soft’ news. -
Only 10
percent of the stories have women as a central focus. -
Only 3
percent of stories challenge stereotypes, compared to 6 percent that reinforce
them.
As many as 96 percent of stories do
not highlight gender equality or inequality.
The imbalance might just be
worse than this report suggests. ”I think the survey was slightly urban-based
because that is where women are working in the news media,” Arul Aram from The
Hindu newspaper in
study told IPS. ”In rural areas women are yet to come up.”
Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press
Service
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