February 16, 2006 was a routine news day in India. Nothing extraordinary had taken place the previous day: no major disaster, no fresh conflict, no new outbreak of violence or disease, no significant political upheaval, no dramatic boom or crash on the stock market, no extravagant spiritual confluence.

According to the main headlines on the front pages of the Bangalore press that day, the "cartoon cauldron" boiled over in Pakistan, the French president ordered the "toxic ship" Le Clemenceau back to home base, and the new chief minister of Karnataka attempted to settle into his new job and finalise a provisional list of proposed ministerial colleagues. Some papers had a variety of additional stories on the front page, including "Why Maharishi told Beatles to go," "Valentine's 2nd only to Diwali," "Govt. to uncork B'lore red" (wine), "Will India go for the kill today?" (cricket), "Khushboo wants Maxim to pay Rs. 3 cr." and "Wife, paramour get life."

A few women made it to page one: tennis players Sania Mirza and Camille Pin, actresses Khushboo and Preity Zinta, Padmavathi (convicted in the murder case mentioned above), and women delegates photographed with Infosys Chief Mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy during a programme for women in the Information Technology (IT) industry.

Several women also featured on inside pages. In fact, there was an unusually high representation of women on the sports pages, often spilling over onto the front and other pages, thanks to the ongoing Bangalore Open 2006 International Women's Tennis Tournament. An actress who was a spectator at the tournament was also photographed along with a fellow (male) actor. Among others whose pictures appeared in the press that day were a model displaying a necklace of solitaire diamonds at a jewellery exhibition, Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty (under attack by the "moral police" in Tamilnadu) and Hollywood actress Salma Hayak (at a press meet in Mexico City).

Global study

The pattern of news coverage, and trends in the representation of women in the news, emerging from this impromptu survey of the Bangalore press on February 16 more or less conform to the findings of a major new international study, the Global Media Monitoring Project 2005 (GMMP 05), released in London the previous day. The third in a series of surveys conducted every five years from 1995, the GMMP 05 was the most extensive international research into gender in news media to date, covering newspapers, television and radio in 76 countries, including India.

There has been only marginal improvement in the number of women seen and heard in the news over the past decade.


 •  Gender, media and tsunamis
 •  GMMP coverage at NWMI web site

Nearly 13,000 news stories were scrutinised by volunteers across the world exactly a year earlier, on February 16, 2005. According to "Who Makes the News?" - the comprehensive report presenting and analysing the global data thus gathered -- women continue to be markedly under-represented in the news, comprising only 21 per cent of all news subjects across the world. In other words, while women constitute over half the world's population, they make up less than a quarter of the people featured in the news. There has been only marginal improvement in the number of women seen and heard in the news over the past decade: the corresponding figures revealed by the earlier exercises were 17 per cent in 1995 and 18 per cent in 2000.

When women do make the news it is primarily as "stars" (celebrities, royalty, etc.) or as "ordinary people." Female newsmakers outnumber males in only two occupational categories: home maker and student. They are under-represented even in professional categories where they do have a substantial presence – for example, in Rwanda, which has the highest proportion of female politicians in the world (49 per cent), only 13 per cent of politicians in the news are women.

Expert opinion in the news is still overwhelmingly male, with men making up 83 per cent of all experts and 86 per cent of all spokespersons quoted in stories. If women do appear at all, it is generally in their personal capacity, narrating personal experiences or voicing popular opinion. Women's points of view are rarely heard on topics that dominate the news agenda, such as politics and economics. Surprisingly, even in stories that affect women directly and profoundly, such as gender-based violence, it is the male voice that tends to prevail.

Female news subjects are over three times as likely as males to be identified in terms of their family status, even when they are experts or spokespersons. Women are also more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims. Even among women, certain categories – such as older women -- are more invisible than others: nearly three quarters of female news subjects are under 50. Yet women are much more likely than men to appear in photographs, especially in stories relating to crime, violence or disaster.

Just ten per cent of all stories focus specifically on women, except in North America where women are central to the news in 20 per cent of stories -- which still amounts to only one in five. Women are rarely central to stories relating to politics (eight per cent) and economics (three per cent), the most high profile areas of the news agenda. Even in topics where the percentage of female news subjects is relatively high, such as education, health, childcare and consumer issues, women seldom feature centrally. As the GMMP 05 report puts it, "With so few women central to the news – particularly in stories that dominate the news agenda – news content reflects male priorities and perspectives. The absence of a gender angle in stories in the 'hard' news topics reflects a blinkered approach to the definition of news and newsworthiness."

Female news subjects are over three times as likely as males to be identified in terms of their family status, even when they are experts or spokespersons. Women are also more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims.