“The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005 is a grassroots media monitoring, research and advocacy project which aims to promote the fair and balanced representation of women and men in news media worldwide.” It’s full report, entitled “Who Makes the News?” is available here. An Executive Summary is available here. Among the report’s findings (extracted from the Executive Summary):
There is not a single major news topic in which women outnumber men as newsmakers. In stories on politics and government only 14% of news subjects are women; and in economic and business news only 20%. Yet these are the topics that dominate the news agenda in all countries. Even in stories that affect women profoundly, such as gender based violence, it is the male voice (64% of news subjects) that prevails.
Women make the news not as figures of authority, but as celebrities (42%), royalty (33%) or as ‘ordinary people’. Female newsmakers outnumber males in only two occupational categories – homemaker (75%) and student (51 %). It is often said that news provides a mirror on the world. But GMMP 2005 shows that it does not. The world we see in the news is a world in which women are virtually invisible.
Only 21% of news subjects – the people who are interviewed, or whom the news is about – are female. Though there has been an increase since 1995, when 17% of those heard and seen in the news were women, the situation in 2005 remains abysmal. For every woman who appears in the news, there are five men.
As newsmakers, women are under-represented in professional categories such as law (18%), business (12%) and politics (12%). In reality, women’s share of these occupations is higher. For instance, in Rwanda – which has the highest proportion of female politicians in the world (49%) – only 13% of politicians in the news are women.
Expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male. Men are 83% of experts, and 86% of spokespersons. By contrast, women appear in a personal capacity – as eye witnesses (30%), giving personal views (31 %) or as representatives of popular opinion (34%).
Men go on making news well into their 50s and 60s: nearly half (49%) of all male news subjects are aged 50 or over. But older women are almost invisible: nearly three quarters (72%) of female news subjects are under 50.
19% of female news subjects, compared with 8% of males are portrayed in this way. News disproportionately focuses on female victims in events that actually affect both sexes – accidents, crime, war. Topics that specifically involve women – sexual violence, domestic violence, cultural practice – are given little coverage.
In stories on crime, violence or disaster, pictures of women are frequently employed for dramatic effect. In newspapers and on television, the female body is often used to titillate. Women – 52% of the world’s population – are barely present in the faces seen, the voices heard, the opinions represented in the news. The ‘mirror’ of the world provided by the news is like a circus mirror. It distorts reality, inflating the importance of certain groups, while pushing others to the margins. When it comes to reflecting women, women’s viewpoints and women’s perspectives on the world, this mirror has a very large and enduring black spot.
Female news subjects are more than three times as likely as males to be identified in terms of their family status: 17% of women are described as wife, daughter, mother etc.; only 5% of men are described as husband, son, father and so on. Even in authoritative functions such as spokesperson or expert, women do not escape this identification with family. So while men are perceived and valued as autonomous individuals, women’s status is deemed to derive primarily from their relationship to others.
