Gender Representation in the News Media:
Preliminary Analysis from the Global Media
Monitoring Project 2005.
Possible paths from research to active citizenship.
A panel proposal prepared for the Gender and Communication Section
at the IAMCR conference 2005
Proposal endorsed by:
Dafna Lemish, Tel Aviv University
Daniela Roventa-Frumusani, Bucharest University/Ana-Society for Feminist
Analysis
Frieda Saeys, Ghent University
Leela Rao, Asian Network for Women in Communication (ANWIC)
Midori Suzuki, Ritsumeikan University/Forum for Citizens‟ Television and
Media
Stefania Milan (convenor), University of Padova/World Association for
Christian Communication/Inter Press Service
Keywords
Gender, representation, news monitoring, qualitative analysis, active citizenship
Background
On February 16, 2005, the world's media came again under scrutiny when hundreds of
people in 90 countries monitored the portrayal of women and men in the mainstream
news media. The ‘Global Media Monitoring Project’ (GMMP1), as it became known, is
a grassroots media monitoring, research and advocacy project which aims to promote the
fair and balanced gender representation in television, radio and newspapers worldwide.
The idea of a global monitoring day to document the participation of men and women in
the news media was born out of the 1994 international Bangkok conference on “Women
Empowering Communication,” organized by the World Association for Christian
Communication (WACC) in conjunction with two other international women‟s networks,
Isis Manila and the International Women‟s Tribune Centre.
The first GMMP was held later on in 1995 and organized by the NGO MediaWatch
Canada. The results of the analysis of over 15,000 news stories in 71 countries, published
in a book entitled ‘Women’s Participation in the News,’ were released on time to be
presented at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing,
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www.globalmediamonitoring.org
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influencing the final Plan of Action (Section J on „Women and Media‟). According to the
data, women were only 17 percent of the world‟s news subjects.
In 2000, five years after the first edition, WACC coordinated a more extensive GMMP
study. Over 50,000 data records from some 16,000 news stories in 70 countries were
analyzed, showing a statistically irrelevant 1 percent improvement in the number of
women in the news. A simple qualitative analysis of the data was also included in the
monitoring. The results released for Beijing +5 events in June 2000 and published in a
book entitled „Who Makes the News?’
The GMMP contributed to shape national communication policies (e.g. in Jamaica), but
most importantly it opened the way to more media monitoring, contributing to raise
awareness and create solidarity at the global level. It has been used as a tool for media
literacy, education and training activities and originated several local and national
workshops and campaigns. In 2004 the GMMP has been nominated by the International
Communication Association (ICA) for its award of „Most Important Applied/Public
Policy Research Programme.‟
At its third edition, GMMP 2005 aimed not only to assess changes in worldwide
representations of women by the media since 2000, but also to improve and build upon
the original study by introducing a more extensive qualitative analysis, posing new
challenges to both activists and researchers and opening to new exciting perspectives.
Moreover, the 2005 monitoring is clearly advocacy-oriented: a tool for activists to lobby
for more gender-sensitive communication policy and media reform.
The results of GMMP 2005 will be published in global, regional and national reports at
the end of 2005, but preliminary qualitative analysis will be available for the IAMCR
Taipei conference.
Panel Outline
Rather than follow the traditional paper presentation, our proposal privileges a collective
approach to the debate. The GMMP is offering to researchers from all over the world a
common ground for confrontation and speculation, challenging the traditional way of
doing sectorial research. We would like to bring this approach to IAMCR as well. The
discussion will have the form of a round table, and each panellist will focus on different
points of the debate.
1. Introduction to the Global Media Monitoring Project: history, methods, main
results of the past editions and conclusions.
2. GMMP 2005: the case for transnational qualitative analysis. This part is intended
to highlight methods and potential insights, stressing the methodological challenges of
working qualitatively in a cross-cultural context and discussing how can such results be
compared.
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3. Preliminary findings: case studies from Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Each
panellist will bring some specific „case study‟ examples from her own GMMP sample to
illustrate the work and the findings (Asia: Japan and India; Middle East: Israel and
Palestine; Western and Eastern Europe: Romania, Belgium, Italy, United Kingdom).
4. From theory to practice: researchers as active citizens in the perspective of the
feminist media research. The final discussion is addressed to understand how can the
GMMP findings be used for lobbying and campaigning, policy making, awareness
raising, training and for academic purposes. The aim is to tie the GMMP research aspect
to activism, underlining the link between feminist research and its commitment to making
the world a better place.
Individual contributions to the debate
Dafna Lemish, Tel Aviv University. An added quality through the qualitative
analysis; The Middle East perspective.
(Item number 2– qualitative aspect)
A central feature of the GMMP is the integration of an in-depth, qualitative analysis of
specific news items. Such analysis brings together the many elements quantified in the
survey to create a more meaningful and holistic picture of what news reports actually
look like around the world. It highlights stereotypical clichés manipulated in the media
and situates them within a specific cultural context. More specifically, the analysis
focused on five types of stories: (a) Stories that are blatantly stereotypical; (b) Stories that
are more subtly stereotypical; (c) Stories that comprise missed opportunities in terms of
the discussion of women; (d) Stories that challenge stereotypes; and (e) Stories that
highlight issues pertaining to equality or in inequality between women and men. The
presentation will discuss the unique methodological questions and challenges involved in
a large-scale, cross-cultural study such as: training coders, making informed coding
choices, analyzing the items, creating themes, comparing results across cultures, and the
like. The contribution of the qualitative part of the study to attaining a more complete
understanding of the major research question and, particularly, to highlighting the
interplay between universal news-reporting practices and locally contextualized norms of
professionalism in regards to gender representation, too, will be addressed.
(Item number 3- local context)
The analysis of news reporting in Israel is contextualized within the unique circumstances
of a society deeply divided over the conflict with the Palestinians and the future of the
Occupation of Palestine, and a domination of a discourse of militarism and masculinity
that serves to marginalize women and women‟s perspectives.
Daniela Roventa-Frumusani, Bucharest University/Ana-Society for Feminist
Analysis. Romania’s case. Gender relations, stereotypes and challenges in a
post-communist country
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“There are those who have rights and those who have duties” (said Genevieve Fraisse).
15 years after the fall of communism in Eastern European countries the situation of
women is far to have improved: feminization of poverty, undereducation, unemployment,
invisibility in the public sphere and overwork in the domestic one are some crucial issues
which have to be changed by the solidarity activity of women in politics, academics,
journalists and activists in NGOs. Even if the female population of the country is 51%,
the presence of women in Parliament after the last elections is the same (10%), only 3
women ministers out of 25 and 2 women prefects in 40 counties.
In a very conservative and patriarchal system (as rejection of the communist false
“emancipatory” regime for women), women are victims of marginalization, trivialization,
symbolic annihilation in Gaye Tuchman‟s words. This generalized position of victim of
double burden in family and invisibility and non recognition in the public sphere is due to
the absence of models (lack of affirmative action, of gender awareness campaigns as well
as biased representations in the media). Even if women really participate in the market
economy, men are gratified with compensations from the budget, with top management
positions and different salaries.
The portrayal of women in news (researches conducted at the master degree and
Romanian sociological and mediological works) show that men are absolute candidates
for the front page, women for the internal ones or for none; men “sell” competence,
power, money, women “sell‟ body and care for others. Even if women are in a balanced
proportion as author of the media product (at the middle or lowest level), they are rarely
present in the news (20% and in stereotypical positions: sexy VIP, politician‟s annex-
wife, daughter etc., impersonal victim of domestic violence, poverty etc.
After monitoring advertising, print and TV (1995, 2000, 2003, 2005) we can assert that
all media are misogynistic and tend (perhaps in an unintentional manner) towards status,
role, age discrimination between men and women. Unfortunately all institutions (school,
church and perhaps less family) perpetuate sexist messages, and a different kind of
socialization (affirmative, self-confident for men; submissive, silent for women). That is
why the media could through a more adequate representation challenge some stereotypes,
by promoting models of success (that will be our focus in media analysis), as well as new
curricula improved by the inclusion of the gender dimension .
Frieda Saeys, University of Ghent. Western European case study: longitudinal
and in- depth research in Flanders (Belgium)
In this part we will present an ongoing long term analysis in Flanders, as well as some
comments to the GMMP-methodology.
As the GMMP waves only screen a selection of news media on just one day, the results
are not that useful for generalisation on the local level. To have more evidence for both
scientific and advocacy reasons, the analysis in Flanders was extended to artificial weeks,
in 1995 and 2000 for all media, and retroactive for all newspapers every 5 years, back to
1980. This analysis, which will be repeated in 2005, allows us to look for longer term
evolutions. Soon it became clear that some figures definitely needed more contexts. So
e.g. the amounts of female journalists in the news were compared with the amounts of
female working as a journalist in the different media.
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But how useful is the GMMP-tool as such for local purposes? That kind of questions is
hard to answer in general. So we decided to organise reliability tests and to investigate
the validity of some aspects of the GMMP- instrument by comparing the outcome of
different approaches on the same corpus of local materials. The most interesting exercise
was the use of the MEER software programme, originally developed for the analysis of
gender representation in talk shows.
Leela Rao, Asian Network for Women In Communication. Hidden voices;
blurred images- insights from qualitative analysis of news.
(Item number 2- Transnational qualitative analysis). The general approach for GMMP
for all regions/countries is the same. With in the frame work suggested to analyse
stereotypes, missed opportunities for a more balanced gender reporting, the nuances of
differences that emerge in the language of reporting, the assumed standard practices of
news report presentation will need to be teased out in the qualitative analysis. My
presentation will be from the experiences of the South Asia partners. These efforts would
further strengthen our methodological concerns in cross cultural studies. The significant
difference in this study is that even cartoons, editorials and opinion pieces in the
newspapers can be analysed for gender stereotyped presentation.
(Item number 3- local context).A representative number of case studies from the Asian
countries who are participating in the study would be compared.
(Item number 4- from theory to practice). Since GMMP 2000 results were announced,
several workshops have been conducted with gender sensitization as the central theme,
and GMMP results have always been used to advocate monitoring as an instrument to
promote gender equality. Some insights from these workshops will be presented.
Generally in most media training situations (in India as I know it) gender and media is
treated as a separate course or an add on for those who might be interested. In recent
years the effort has been to integrate gender issues in curriculum so that it gets ingrained
as standard practice in the future media professionals. The opportunities for such efforts
and the challenges they offer will be discussed.
Midori Suzuki, Ritsumeikan University. Building Active Citizenship: GMMP
and Media Literacy in Japan
Although GMMP takes place on a certain day, in Japan we aim to foster the continuation
of GMMP activities through media literacy workshops. Media literacy workshops are an
opportunity for citizens to discuss gender representation in the news, as well as a forum
for dialogue on more creative and diverse ways of communication.
12 groups were involved in the 2005 GMMP in Japan. These groups were located all over
Japan. Some members of monitoring groups were already involved in media literacy
activities and formed groups especially for the project in their local communities.
Participating in the GMMP was also significant because it not only linked these local
groups to a nationwide network, but also a global one. On the one, same day, people
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living in different places around the world participate in monitoring representations of
gender in the mainstream media.
Media literacy activities are important in order for citizens living in the global ICT era to
be active, autonomous and affect change. GMMP and media literacy activities in Japan
provide an opportunity for citizens to be empowered through participation and expand
their perspective on their own media environment.
Stefania Milan, Padova University/WACC. A European perspective: Italy and
the United Kingdom in comparison; The case for advocacy: a European
dimension?
Western European countries are characterized by a plurality of printed and broadcasted
media. Our Constitutions rejects any gender-based discrimination and it is common sense
that there is a sort of „equity‟ between men and women. But yet the past editions of the
GMMP highlighted a strong unbalance in the mediatic representation of men and women
in the European media: they did not seem to be able to offer a gender-sensitive reporting.
In this context, „gender equity‟ in the society is often seen by media professionals and
journalists as the only pre-condition of a gender-balanced reporting. If on the one hand
explicitly sexist language is universally condemned, on the other hand there is a tendency
in considering gender-sensitive media and communication policies an useless constraint
to a fair reporting. I will contribute to the debate on the qualitative analysis in the GMMP
frameworks, bringing samples of „good‟ and „bad‟ practices from Italy and the United
Kingdom: although these two countries are immersed in the same Western-globalized-
context, they have different „mediascapes‟ and a different „media histories.‟
I will focus then on the media and communication policies at the European level, trying
to understand if it makes sense to talk of an „European media sphere‟ and whether there is
any room for gender-based communication policies, paying special attention to the
„journalist‟s ethics.‟ I will also address the issue of the GMMP as a tool for „democratize
the research‟ empowering activists and common citizens.
Contact information:
Stefania Milan
c/o WACC- London
smilan@ips.org or temp1@wacc.org.uk
+44.7932797804
+39.3332309945
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