2020 was a year unknowingly slowed by the outbreak of Covid-19, a highly infectious respiratory disease that turned a pandemic globally. This novel disease crippled the socio-economic and political business of all countries unsparingly leaving many as victims. Women as to no doubt were more affected yet less heard or seen.
Research has found that women issues and gender equality are more invisible and underrepresented in media coverage since Covid-19 outbreak in 2020.
This research is part of findings from the 6th Edition of the Global Media Monitoring Project Report (GMMP) launched on July 14th 2021 virtually via zoom and Facebook Live by consortium parties globally.
Dr. Sarah Macharia the GMMP Global Coordinator, while launching the report, pointed out that there is a worse gender perspective in content on women visibility despite their increased presence in the pandemic news.
“Stories about or regarding a dimension of the coronavirus focus on women are four points less than stories not linked to Covid-19, and they are less likely to raise gender equality or inequality issues, or to clearly challenge gender stereotypes.” Said Dr. Macharia
The report findings across 116 countries indicate that whereas there is an increase in women presence as subjects, sources and journalists in covid-19 stories, it is not the case with other news or representation in gender conflicting issues or equality.
GMMP 2020 covered 30,172 stories published in newspapers, broadcast on radio and television, and disseminated on news websites and via news media tweets. Twenty-five per cent of stories sampled carried a coronavirus primary theme.
Indeed further findings reflected that only 1% of the coded stories catered for gender related issues against women and girls yet with the concerned underrepresented at 35% as sources or subjects.
This is on souring issues like sexual harassment, rape, among other gender based violence encounters of epidemic proportions during these Covid-19 times.
Of 18872 victims of Domestic Violence in Uganda in 2020, 13145 were female adults according to a 2020 Uganda Police Crime report. However media news in Uganda has had less coverage of the problem despite the reported numbers.
Dr. Macharia and others denote that the most severe underrepresentation in Gender Based Violence stories takes place in newspapers, in which women are just 35% of subjects and sources.
Even with physical achievement, women remained unnoticed by media with expertise voices against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Volunteers to the 2020 GMMP report highlight that whereas women share as 46% health specialists of the labor force statistics, media only projected a 27% of this as women health specialists in the novel pandemic stories.
Motunrayo Alaka the leading advocate for the development of investigative reporting and accountability journalism suggested that to fight through for women visibility and gender equality, there is need to make more intentional steps by starting from teaching media.
“Media is as good as it sources. We therefore as the GMMP need to educate media and its ownership about gender equality for us to see meaningful women representation and presentation,” said Alaka
She added that women inequalities as reinforced by media is something all must see as an issue being dealt with as a deeply cultural issue where people are strongly attached to.
Alaka also doubling as the Executive Director of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) emphasized that not educating media alone; women in leadership positions equally require teaching as they equally depict gender equality.
“Fact that a woman is in a leadership position does not mean that the women plight changes therefore we need to educate them too as its expected of them to enforce gender equality and voices of women.” Said Alaka
Uganda, one of the 116 countries, in the 2021 elections witnessed a 43% increase of women in leadership positions on cabinet, 46% of local government positions, 33% of parliamentary seats, which means that the number of women in political leadership positions has increased.
Uganda Media Women’s Association (UMWA), the national focal organization for the Global Media Monitoring Project however analyses that even with this progress made, women in leadership positions continue to be misreported and misrepresented in the media.
Intrigued by the project, UMWA since 2014 has been monitoring the media in Uganda on how it represents and presents women. In 2016, the women in media representative organization tracked media coverage of the general elections. Supported by Democratic Governance Facility, the organization in 2018 till to date continues to monitor media content and coverage of women in politics.
In one of its gender media monitoring findings between April and September 2020 comparable to findings since 2014, UMWA observed that at 26% of women as news media subjects, there has been a 6% slight increase in women visibility.
This ascertains that change in gender measurements has been small and slow in the past seven years in the news media.
Through these efforts, media in Uganda is propelled more for change as stories centred on women could support advocacy for gender equality and women rights. This is in addition to fronting the need for news media that is more gender aware and responsive.
Despite the continued women underrepresentation, data collected in the 2020 media monitoring project identifies that women have gained visibility in some aspects since 2015 evaluation.
According to the global statistics of the report launched, women are at 40% as reporters in media, a three points increment from a past 15years stagnation at 37%. As spokespersons and experts in news stories, women have been better eight and seven points respectively from 19% in the past five years.
Members to this global initiative assert that all things remaining equal, it will take at least a further 67years to close the average gender equality gap in traditional news media.
The 2030 Global Agenda on Sustainable Development, Goal 5, emphasizes achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
Just like Alaka suggested educating media, UMWA equally recommends that to close up the gender gap, among other efforts, continuous training of both the media managers and reporters in gender sensitive reporting is needed.
As a national focal organization for the Media Monitoring Project, UMWA with support from various partners has severally conducted gender based trainings with female journalists across the country. Since 2016, the media women’s association has so far trained 900 journalists.
Recently, the 38 year existing media women umbrella developed a training guide to standardize capacity building and media empowerment on reporting gender based violence.
To actualize a collective national gender inclusion, Uganda Media Women’s Association developed a national strategy to mainstream gender in the media in 2015 in addition to other gender media monitoring initiatives.
It hopes that continued engagement and roll out of the developed strategy will deliver the desired effect of having a media that leaves no one behind as women strive for gender equality and social justice.
Global Media Monitoring Project 2020 report is a sixth five yearly data collection on women portrayal and representation in media news since 1995. The sequential reports track progress and changes in gender equality and women visibility in media thereby calling media to redress reinforced gender misperceptions.
This year, the report includes data and analysis on gender representation in Covid-19 related news stories, roles of indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities, among others.
This is in addition to a gender analysis on changes in the presence, representation and voice of the subjects and sources in news since first edition report.
The GMMP was idealized in 1994 by women in media convening at the Women Empowering Communication International Conference fast forth adopted by World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and MediaWatch (Canada).
Volunteers from diverse women organizations globally make up the GMMP work output.
The first report was issued in 1995 which has since then projected through its findings unequal gender relations across spheres worst reinforced by news media entrenched in mainstream channels globally.
This is really factual data and reality, we need to do more to involve the women now that even times are seemingly harder for a conducive environment for them to flourish