Whole-of-society approach needed to advance gender equality in media

06 Dec Whole-of-society approach needed to advance gender equality in media

A comprehensive, systems approach is needed to definitively address the gender inequality issues plaguing the media sector, research conducted on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the UN Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action has found.

Titled “Breaking Barriers: A Whole-of-Society Approach to Gender Equality in Media Development,” the report by Fojo Media Institute and the Center for Media Assistance (CIMA) defines what a broader enabling environment for gender-equal media might look like.

“The report’s title may not sound glamorous or sexy, but it reflects what is truly needed,” said co-author Agneta Söderberg Jacobson of Fojo at an online discussion around the report’s findings on 25 November. “No single action can shift the needle.”  

Report co-author Malak Monir of CIMA noted that efforts to achieve gender equality in media can’t end with increasing the number of women journalists.

“We can’t keep trying to treat symptoms without working to discover root causes of these issues.”

Recommendations for gender-equal media as Beijing+30 approaches

Gender equality is a global goal, and media are central to its attainment, as reflected in Section J of the Beijing Platform, said co-author Sarah Macharia, global coordinator of WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), who moderated the online discussion.

However, 25 years of GMMP stocktaking show that “progress towards a news media industry that reflects and is representative of society remains painfully slow,” she noted, with only an 8-point change towards greater gender equality in women as news sources and subjects in mainstream media from 1995 to 2020.

Macharia said a Fojo study in 2022 revealed a “sparsity of policies in media organizations worldwide” to address the glass ceiling for women and explored ways to make policy and legislation more effective.

Building on the study, Breaking Barriers brings in analysis from a series of multisector roundtables including media organizations, civil society, academia, government, self-regulatory bodies, and business, as well as commissioned abstracts by specialists, case studies, and interviews.

The result is some 30 distinctive recommendations mapped out in intervention pathways in three areas – media regulation; ownership, management, and leadership; market dynamics – and at three levels – micro, mesa, and macro.

“The three areas are deeply interconnected,” Macharia observed. She presented three of the report’s case studies – from India, Somalia, and Sweden – that illustrate successful interplay of actions by different stakeholders at different levels.

“Tackling the challenge of creating a gender-equal diverse and democratic news media system requires a holistic approach,” she stressed, “one that brings together cross-sectoral and transnational coalitions committed to designing and implementing strategies for industry-wide change.”

Advancing gender-equal media in authoritarian contexts

Macharia acknowledged that sustained multistakeholder dialogues for gender-sensitive co-regulatory frameworks may be challenging to implement in contexts governed by authoritarian regimes or deeply polarized societies.

Where there is little chance of involving the government in a whole-of-society approach, the focus must be on strengthening local media efforts to build a stronger media ecosystem, first at the local level and then between ecosystems in other countries, said Laura Aguirre, journalist and co-founder of the Salvadoran independent feminist media outlet Alharaca.

“It is very important to maintain credibility of media ecosystem and its independence,” she noted. This means including independent organizations, international bodies, neutral mediators, civil society, and other groups that can serve as watchdogs.

Aguirre said that even in conditions of economic instability and political crisis, independent media are striving to flourish, thrive, and survive – and women are at the forefront of these efforts.

At the same time, a further challenge is to address a mainstream perspective that gender equality is not a priority issue, according to Aguirre, who is also director of development at SembraMedia, one of the key studies in Breaking Barriers that shows the incubation of more than 50 women-led journalism projects in Latin America. 

“We have to develop a model not only to address democratic decline but also these narratives in [the] political [and overall] social ecosystem.”

Kigali Declaration as successful whole-of-society model

The whole-of-society approach presented in Breaking Barriers is already happening to some extent, noted Yemisi Akinbobola, journalist and co-founder of African Women in Media (AWiM).

She pointed to the Kigali Declaration as a model of a whole-of-society intervention. Co-designed in the context of the AWiM convention 2023, the Declaration outlines a multi-sector plan of action to eliminate violence in and through the media, targeting both coverage of gender-based violence and violence in media organizations. 

Akinbobola highlighted that the report effectively provides a documentation and monitoring structure that makes visible what can be achievable at each level of intervention.

This framework can be used “to begin to map media development ecosystems and see activities that be developed further.”

She added that it is vital not to overlook benchmarking so there is clarity on what constitutes an effective intervention.

Online panel discussion “A Whole-of-Society Approach to Gender Equality in the Media” on 25 November 2024

Using AI to further gender equality in media

Artificial intelligence was not yet on the radar when Breaking Barriers was being done, Macharia noted, a research gap that CIMA is working to close.  

Analyzing content for bias and underrepresentation is one way that AI can be used to address gender equality in and through the media, reported Martin Schori, deputy editor-in-chief and head of editorial AI projects at the Swedish media outlet Aftonbladet.

The media organization, one of Scandinavia’s largest, has used AI data mining to identify gender gaps in audiences across its platforms.

An internal investigation, including a bot scraping all homepage content to identify who is seen and heard, revealed “a big gender gap in reporting and representation,” he said.

Some aspects of this are not under Aftonbladet’s control but others are, Schori noted, adding that the outlet has created a GPT assistant to help reporters find female experts.

The business argument is a convincing one, according to the journalist. “We want to represent everyone in Sweden. It’s bad in many ways, not the least for business, if we systematically exclude large proportions of inhabitants.”

He urged media organizations to use AI to predict how more balanced representation would benefit business and to personalize content and formats for different audiences including women.

The business case for equitable news

Luba Kassova, journalist and director of the international audience strategy consultancy AKAS, said that research backs up the business case for gender equality in the media.

Her Missing Perspective reports (2020) with Internews outline the untapped financial potential of making news more equitable, putting possible growth for different revenue streams into dollar amounts.

“What other stakeholders can do is to underline the argument that gender equality is good for business in media markets.”

Of the five frames for change that her report From Outrage to Opportunity tested, a journalist’s duty of fair representation and the desire to provide content relevant to audiences resonated most strongly with news organizations, in addition to the business model argument.  

Kassova noted the importance of the three-level approach presented in Breaking Barriers. “Our research shows that news is as diverse as the weakest element in news value chain.”

Addressing backlash to gender equality

Macharia observed that the growing global backlash to feminism, particularly among boys and young men of Generation Z, presents another challenge to efforts to move the needle on gender equality in and through the media and even to safeguard progress that has already been made.

Kassova recommended taking an empathy-based approach that highlights how patriarchy affects men negatively as well as women.

“A didactic feministic narrative is not going to work. [We must] acknowledge where they are and that they may feel threatened.”

Media organizations should take a look at their own content and staff with a gender lens, she said. Such an exercise can be very effective in changing attitudes by revealing just how much content leans towards the perspective of men and that value chain than women.

Processes for change include GMMP

In conclusion, Söderberg Jacobson highlighted the GMMP and the Kigali Declaration as important, ongoing processes for change.  

“The GMMP has been and still is key for any advocacy and awareness-raising on the matter,” she said, adding that the next edition, GMMP+30, will take place in 2025, with Fojo assuming national coordination in Sweden.

With Breaking Barriers already being used for graduate work in Sweden, the report’s publishers are planning follow-up study to explore AI and gender equality in the media.

“Research and knowledge building are crucial elements to push progress.”

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Watch the Online Panel

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