The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020 reveals the presence of women in Indian news media has declined over the past decade.
TCN News
CHENNAI – In the last decade from 2010 to 2020, the overall presence of women in news dropped from 22 per cent in 2010 to 14 per cent in 2020, the just-launched India country report of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020 has revealed.
In an event hosted by the Network of Women in Media – India, and Women’s Christian College, Chennai the India Country Report of the GMMP 2020 was launched. The report, released every 5 years since 1995, aims to track the representation of women in media globally. The India Report of the GMMP provides a detailed look at the media sector from an Indian context.
“Women are no longer missing from the news media, the question today is not so much where are the women but who are the women,” said Sarah Macharia, Global Coordinator, GMMP.
The GMMP report 2020, she said, was the most extensive report ever, that too, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. The idea of a scientific methodology to finding the status of women in relation to men in news media, she said, was first mooted at a conference in 1994 in Bangkok, one year before the first GMMP global report in 1995. Network of Women in Media, India, she said, has been anchoring the GMMP in India since 2010.
Dr. Padmaja Shaw, India Coordinator, GMMP 2020, threw light on the process behind the formulation of the latest report. 30 volunteers from 14 states of India monitor 735 news stories, 20 newspapers.
“It was the first time that the whole process from selection to training to coding was done completely online.”
Dr Mukherjee explained the parameters on which the report was formulated which included looking at the presence of women as subjects and sources in news media if they were seen as spokesperson thought leaders or experts.
Dr Sweta Singh pointed out some of the most salient findings including that the overall percentage of women in news as subjects and sources dropped sharply in 2020 to 14% across print, TV and radio, compared to 22% in 2010 and 21% in 2015.
Continuing the trend over the last decade, more women were seen working as reporters, announcers and presenters.
The Round Table Conference, moderated by Kavita Muralidharan saw several speakers talking about their views on the report.
Nirupama Subramanian, National Editor (Mumbai), The Indian Express, said about the report that “It was a reflection of society at large, also seen by the fall in the working women population data”
“There is not a wilful attempt to leave out women, but what is felt is the absence of a strategy to bring them in”, pointed out Dhanya Rajendra, Editor-in-chief, TheNewsMinute.
Alka Dhupkar, Assistant Editor, Times Internet Limited, remarked that revenue models of legacy media today involve collusion with politics and industry, which are male-dominated fields and it prevents women from taking a central place.”
Sreejan, Editor-in-chief, The New Indian Express, felt that media’s nature as a deadline-driven industry made it harder, as a journalist, to reach out to women in the hinterland who are reluctant to be quoted.
The latest Global Report of GMMP 2020 can be read here, and the latest India Country Report can be read here.