Kathmandu, November 26

Equality for women is still a far cry in the Nepali news media. A Global Media Monitoring Project, the fifth and the largest study on the portrayal and representation of women in the news media released globally on November 23, states that the participation of women in the news media is very nominal in comparison to men in Nepal.

It states that of the total 1,092 people involved in the news media in Nepal, 87 per cent are male and 13 per cent female. The GMMP report said progress towards equality of men and women in the news media has virtually ground to a halt.

After 20 years, research in 114 countries revealed continued severe disparity between representation of women and men in news media, it said.

It said that there are 21 per cent female reporters and 79 per cent male reporters in newspaper while there are 33 per cent female reporters and 67 per cent male reporters in radio. Similarly, there are 22 per cent female reporter and 78 per cent male reporter in television in Nepal.

“Worldwide, women make up about 50 per cent of the general population but only 24 of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news, are exactly at the same level found in the 2010 report,” it said.

Women’s relative invisibility in traditional news media has also crossed over into digital news delivery platforms. Only 26 per cent of the people in Internet news stories and media news Tweets combined are women, it said.

The GMMP is a project of the communications advocacy agency, World Association for Christian Communication, with support from UN Women. The first such survey of gender portrayal in news media was conducted in 1995, and at five year intervals after that.

GMMP 2015 is the largest research and advocacy initiative in the world on gender equality in and through the news. UN Women has supported the survey twice consecutively.

The report states that overall women remain more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims as they were a decade ago at 16 and 8 per cent respectively.

Similarly, there is a global glass ceiling for female news reporters in newspaper bylines and newscast reports, with 37 per cent of stories reported by women, the same as a decade ago.

Women report five percent of more stories online 42 per cent in total than in the traditional medium combines. It further said that globally women hold approximately 40 per cent of paid employment.