Who makes the news? Mirror on the Southern African findings of the Global Media Monitoring Project 2005.

Southern Africa has made significant progress towards achieving greater gender balance in the news and in newsrooms, but is still far from achieving equality by any one of the measures used in the third Global Media Monitoring Project, conducted in 2005.

The study is a snapshot of the representation and portrayal of women and men in the news on one day of the year, which has been conducted every five years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. All 13 Southern African countries participated in the global study and provided 8% of the 13,000 news items analysed for the study.

Who makes the news?

Overall it is still men who 'make the news', but women sources of news are slowly increasing, with a global average of 21%. Nine out of the 13 SADC countries showed an improvement over the past few years, with South Africa (26%) now leading the way, followed by Swaziland, Mauritius, Namibia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. Belgium (31%) tops the global list; followed by Sweden and Colombia (30%). The highest performer in Africa is Rwanda (31%). Angola, with 13% women sources tails the regional and global list.

Gender Links, in partnership with Media Institute of Southern Africa, the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network and the Media Monitoring Project, presents its analysis of the Southern African findings in the publication, Who makes the news?

Is anything changing?

While there has been some improvement in women's voices being heard in "hard" news, women are still not heard in proportion to their strengths in any one of the professions. For example, women in Southern Africa comprise 20% of parliamentarians, but only 14% of the politicians quoted.

Women in Southern Africa are least likely to be the subjects or focus of the event or story; blatant and more subtle stereotypes abound; gender still hardly features as a topic; and women are still more likely to be presenters than reporters of news, but this is improving. On the positive side: there has been a dramatic increase of women in the print media; there is a greater diversity of women in different beats; and women journalists are more likely to consult female views.

Challenging stereotypes

The monitoring yielded examples of gender aware reporting: Southern Africa is the only subregion in the study in which the proportion of stories categorised as challenging stereotypes (4%) is higher than those classified as reinforcing stereotypes (3%). The Global Media Monotoring Project 2005 also highlighted examples of how, through consulting a wider range of viewpoints, balance, fairness as well as fresh perspectives and insight can be brought to such reporting. But the major challenge is still to find gender angles in all beats and all stories. There is still a tendency to see gender-aware reporting as stories about successful women, rather than seeking out gender angles, perspectives and sources in all beats and stories.

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Deepening the engagement for gender equity in the media

The regional analysis of the GMMP 2005 recommends that gender and media advocacy be situated within broader debates on human rights, media diversity, ethics and professionalism in the media, growing markets and media sustainability in line with the proposed theme for the 2006 Gender and Media Summit: "Media Diversity: good for business, good for diversity".

Practical strategies include: engaging with media regulatory authorities; deepening the engagement with media decision-makers; setting specific targets; taking a fresh look at training; engaging with media audiences; broadening research to include genres other than the news and invigorating the gender and media activism in the region that has played a key role in raising the awareness responsible for the successes to date.