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

Southern African countries made significant progress towards achieving greater gender balance in the news and in newsrooms, but it still far achieving equality by anyone of the measures used in the third Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). While women sources have increased from 17% in the regional Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) conducted by Gender Links (GL) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in 2002 to 19% in the GMMP conducted across 76 countries in 2005, this is below the global average of 22%.

However, nine out of the 13 SADC countries showed an improvement, with South Africa (26%) now leading the way, followed by Swaziland, Mauritius, Namibia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. Angola, with 13% women sources tails the list.

These are some of the key findings of the GMMP 2005, a snapshot of the representation and portrayal of women and men in the news on one day of the year that has been conducted every five years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

ISBN: 0-620-36015-1
Publisher: Gender Links
Year of Publication: 2006