Including female voices in environmental reporting is important because women and girls represent a unique perspective and are often the most impacted by the effects of climate and environmental change. Yet, for a variety of reasons, stories frequently lack a gender balance or rely on female sources that only serve as subjects, eyewitnesses or passive actors rather than experts or voices of authority.
Only 24% of people seen, heard or read about in the news are women, according to the Global Media Monitoring project, an annual study on gender representation in the news. To determine the gender balance in stories EJN supports, we’ve started counting the number of female sources. It’s still early in the process, but we’re also finding an imbalance, with only around a third of all sources, on average, being women.
So we’d like to hear your thoughts. Does reporting capture the full picture if it’s leaving out these voices? How does this imbalance impact readers’ understanding of a story? How does it impact the way they respond to the issue the story addresses? What are ways our community has for amplifying women’s voices?
The following short survey seeks to evaluate the role of women in environmental reporting based on your personal experiences. We’ll use the results to determine how to address these issues and will feature them in a gender handbook Internews will launch this fall aimed at helping journalists and newsrooms increase the number of women they use as sources in their stories.
Only 24% of people seen, heard or read about in the news are women, according to the Global Media Monitoring project, an annual study on gender representation in the news. To determine the gender balance in stories EJN supports, we’ve started counting the number of female sources. It’s still early in the process, but we’re also finding an imbalance, with only around a third of all sources, on average, being women.
So we’d like to hear your thoughts. Does reporting capture the full picture if it’s leaving out these voices? How does this imbalance impact readers’ understanding of a story? How does it impact the way they respond to the issue the story addresses? What are ways our community has for amplifying women’s voices?
The following short survey seeks to evaluate the role of women in environmental reporting based on your personal experiences. We’ll use the results to determine how to address these issues and will feature them in a gender handbook Internews will launch this fall aimed at helping journalists and newsrooms increase the number of women they use as sources in their stories.