Women Make the News 2008

The results of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMPs) conducted in 1995, 2000 and 2005 found little positive change in selected indicators of gender bias in news media. In the context of news-making, in news content and in journalistic practice, gender bias and negative gender stereotyping have persisted throughout the ten-year period. The GMMP of 2005 in particular found that women are dramatically under-represented in the news; only 21% of news subjects are female and women’s voices are rarely heard in topics that dominate the news agenda.

The theme of Women Make the News 2008 ‘Women’s Untold Stories’ draws attention to and at the same time challenges the gender inequality so pervasive in all facets of media.

Campaign Details

Women Make the News,UNESCO’s global operation to promote gender equality in the media, will be launched for the eighth year on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March) 2008 with the aim of encouraging news media to give editorial responsibility to women editors and journalists on that Day.

Women’s Untold Stories has been chosen as the theme for Women Make the News 2008 to raise media managers’ awareness of female journalists’ and editors’ professional abilities so as to improve their career development opportunities in the newsroom and establish gender equality. As part of the operation, UNESCO invites women to produce news stories and features highlighting their multiple talents, achievements and contributions from their own perspective. It also invites media organizations taking part in the campaign to share their production and upload pertinent articles and news products onto a dedicated website: www.unesco.org/march8.

Women’s Untold Stories was chosen as the theme for this year’s campaign due to the fact that in most countries, the way women are portrayed has not improved much despite an increase in the number of women working in the media as editors, journalists, correspondents, newsreaders and presenters. Three international media monitoring actions* on women in the media, coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communicationin 1995, 2000 and 2005 respectively, revealed that perspectives on women are rarely nuanced: mainstream mediatend to portray women as unrealistically glamorous or as victims of abuse, notably of sexual abuse. Female journalists are best placed to showcase the workaday challenges, and successes, of women and UNESCO is inviting the world’s media organizations to help them do this in their coverage on 8 March 2008.

Women Make the News2008 is a challenging opportunity to promote gender equality in newsrooms by applying the principle of equal opportunity while maintaining the highest journalistic standards. By creating the Women Make the News operation, UNESCO’s Director General, Koichiro Matsuura, has chosen to emphasize the need to keep gender equality at every level in the workplace at the forefront of every society’s agenda.

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*For more information about the studies:

http://www.whomakesthenews.org

For more about Women Make the News: www.unesco.org/march8