Yes We Must: Gender equality in the media by 2030 - Women's Agenda

Yes We Must: Gender equality in the media by 2030

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has launched its 2015 Women Make the News initiative to promote gender equality in the global media.

Women Make the News is an initiative developed by UNESCO as part of the Global Alliance on Media and Gender, created out of the recognition that persistent gender inequality, both in terms of sources quoted in the news and of journalists delivering the news, is damaging to the overall push towards gender equality.

The Alliance aims to tackle gender inequality in the media by encouraging news outlets across the world to involve women in the sourcing, production, delivery, analysis and broadcasting of the news in order to create a global media that better reflects the voices and interests of women, as well as men.

The cornerstone of the work done by the Global Alliance on Media and Gender is Women Make the News, which takes place every year around International Women’s Day (March 8). Each year, Women Make the News has a specific theme relating to the promotion of women in media. UNESCO has recently announced this year’s theme is “Yes we must! Reaching gender equality in the media by 2030!”

“Women Make the News encourages a renewed emphasis on the importance of having a balanced and fair representation of both women and men in the media, as well as diversity of voices and opinions, in order for the media to fulfill their democratic responsibility,” the initiative’s mission statement reads.

The project is twofold: it aims to make progress towards reaching gender parity in the news by 2030 by addressing both the number of female experts quoted in the media and also the number of women controlling the news as journalists, producers and editors.

To address the first issue, Women Make the News 2015 asks media outlets to commit to a target of featuring 30% female sources in all news stories this year. This means newspapers and news channels must pledge to refuse to publish any stories with few or no women quoted as experts.

UNESCO also asks media outlets to run special programs or editions where they give a group of all women exclusive editorial control over their content. During these programs, outlets are also asked to give women control of the practical operation of the newsroom. This means that women in media will have the chance to engage with all areas of the industry in ways they might otherwise have been denied.

Editors-in-chief of news outlets around the world will be asked to produce these special women-only segments in the hope that this experience will spark long-term change in the way editors think about gender equality.

So how much work needs to be done before we achieve gender equality in the media?

Current statistics on gender equality in the news prove just how important it is for editors and media organisations to commit to better engaging women. Last year in North America, women made up only 14% of experts interviewed on talk shows and only 29% of guests invited to roundtable or panel discussions. Men make up the overwhelming majority of experts and sources quoted in every single contemporary media platform.

In January and February of 2013, only 19% of all news articles published included even one female source. This means 81% of all news stories exclusively featured male voices.

The figures for gender equality behind the scenes in news outlets are also disappointing: When it comes to front-page bylines for news journalists, men outnumber women three to one.

Women still make up only 36.3% of staff in newsrooms across the world, and this figure has actually dropped since the late 1990s.

In the US, male columnists outnumber female columnists four to one.

Luckily, some news outlets are heeding advice from initiative like Women Make the News and introducing quotas for female sources in their content.

Women’s Agenda reported last month that Bloomberg’s News Editor-in-Chief made a decision to no longer publish any stories that excluded female voices.

He told his staff that women’s involvement in all topics the publication covers needs to be reflected in their journalism. If the journalists’ stories did not reflect this diversity, he simply would not publish them.

Setting these targets and sticking to them shows that real commitment to promoting gender equality pays off. Let’s hope that initiatives like Women Make the News help other editors to see the importance of making this commitment and motivate them to follow Bloomberg’s lead.

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