Editor’s note: Our findings through our monitoring projects have served to identify and bring attention to the fact that women’s voices are missing, but have left us with more questions than answers. That’s why we’re taking our project a step further by starting a discussion on why this is the case and what can be done about it. This is part of a series of posts each week aiming to start a discussion on gender representations in online news. View past “Report Your Thoughts” discussions here.
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Question 5: What organizations or individuals are making strides?
We started this series by reviewing and discussing the problems of the representation of women in the news (mostly via the Twitter hashtag #GRdiscuss). We talked about why women are absent as sources and authors of the news as well as why women should be included. Findings, including from our studies here at The Gender Report, show that women are a quarter or less of news sources and slightly over a third of news authors.
Now we are on to solutions. Last week, we discussed ideas to increase the number of women who are sources and authors of the news. Now, we want to point out individuals and organizations who are making a difference in this area.
We want to hear from you. Tell us about an individual or a group making strides. What part of the problem are they working on and what’s their solution? How can people get involved?
Join the discussion by sharing your thoughts in the comment section as well as on Twitter with the hashtag #GRdiscuss or on our Facebook page.
Update: The following organizations were suggested during discussion, mainly on Twitter using the #GRdiscuss hashtag.
- Women’s Media Center, specifically its SheSource.org project
- International Women’s Media Foundation
- Global Girl Media (Check out our post on this group here)
- The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications’ Commission on the Status of Women
- The OpEd Project
- World Pulse
- Global Press Institute
Add your favorite organization or individual working for change to the list via the comment section below. Also, check out our “Gender and News” list on Twitter for others worth checking out.
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