More women quoted in media during pandemic – Study
With the start of the covid pandemic there has been a recognizable increase in women quoted in media, according to a study called the Gender Gap Tracker in Canada. Throughout 2021, this has been a sustained trend.
When the tracker was launched in 2018, women voices constituted 27% of the total number of quotes in the studied media. On occasion now, women’s voices have reached 32% (International Women’s Day, for example), but even during the recent Canadian federal election, in which the major party leaders were all male, the proportion of quotes by women continued to be around 30%.
The study comprised three years of data and more than 1 million news articles from the most influential English-language news organizations in Canada. It is presented at Poynter Institute´s website by AI scientist Prashanth Rao, computational linguist Maite Taboada and founder of Informed Opinions amplifying women´s voices Shari Graydon.
NEWS TOPICS
”It’s never been a winning business strategy to chronically underrepresent 50% of your potential audience. At a time of shrinking readership and divided attention, there are clear gains to be made from featuring a greater diversity of perspectives. That became even more obvious during the pandemic, given how differently it affected women”, the presentation says.
An analysis by news topic made by the tracker shows that women are consistently quoted more often in so-called “soft news,” on arts and entertainment, health and lifestyle issues. In contrast, men’s voices appear much more often in articles about politics, business and sports.
SEXIST STEREOTYPES
”This reinforces both sexist stereotypes (women are caregivers; men are leaders) as well as the notion that business is more important than health care. Indeed, the ongoing tension between prioritizing unrestricted reopening of the economy over mask protocols and vaccine passports may be in part a symptom of those entrenched practices.”
The tracker´s breaking down gender by profession shows that 60% of the most quoted men and women are elected officials. ”This not only explains part of the gender gap, since men still dominate politics, but it also paints a more troubling picture about an over-reliance on official sources”, the presentation says.
”Elected officials often default to canned talking points or partisan interests. Journalists know this and actively seek to challenge the default in interviews. But an additional workaround would be to do a more rigorous job of supplementing government news releases with more alternative sources — including women and other underrepresented populations who are able to speak to the disparate experiences of citizens affected by the policy being proposed.”
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