Only 22 pc of women find mention in news

New Delhi: Belying perceptions of a manifold increase in women as subjects or writers in media, a new report says that the female gender constituted just 22 per cent of the people heard or read about in news.

Only 22 per cent of the news subjects who were sources of information were women, the rest 78 per cent of the news sources being men, says the Global Media Monitoring Project research report released here and in Mumbai simultaneously today.

The report further says that only 12 per cent of the news stories had women as the central focus, while only five per cent of them highlighted gender equality or inequality.

Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of news stories reinforced gender stereotypes while only nine per cent challenged them.

A whopping 76 per cent of the people heard or read about in the world's news are male.

The GMMP monitored 1,365 newspapers, television and radio stations and Internet news sites. A huge 17,795 news stories and 38,253 people in the news in 108 countries with 82 per cent of the world's people were considered for the project.

A total of 24 per cent of people in the news are female, compared to 17 per cent in 1995, while 44 per cent of persons providing popular opinion in news stories are female compared to 34 per cent in 2005.

Only 13 per cent of news stories focus centrally on women and women in occupations outside homes are not represented in proportion to their real presence, it says.

The age of women in the news is mentioned twice as often and family status almost four times as often as for men.

Today female reporters are responsible for 37 per cent of stories compared to 28 per cent 15 years ago and their stories challenge gender stereotypes twice as often as stories by male reporters.

However, challenging the findings of the study, Prasar Bharti Chairperson and former editor of a leading daily Mrinal Pandey said, "the report does not take into account the two major dailies which have the highest readership in the Hindi belt and thus ignores an important section of vernacular media".

BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said, the study throws light on facts of occupational representation of women and how the stereotyping of women needs to be broken.