Championing Gender Equality in Media: Key Projects and Organizations

Gender equality in media isn’t just a talking point – it’s a measurable challenge. Despite women making up half the global population, they appear in only about a quarter of news stories worldwide. Over the past three decades, several dedicated projects and organizations have emerged to monitor, challenge, and change the way media represents and includes women. From large-scale research initiatives to practical training resources and global alliances, these efforts form a web of advocacy that keeps the pressure on newsrooms, policymakers, and media institutions across the world.

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 🔗

The Global Media Monitoring Project, or GMMP, is the largest and longest-running research initiative focused on gender in the world’s news media. Coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), it has been conducted every five years since 1995. Each edition functions as a data-driven snapshot of who gets a voice in the news – essentially asking the question: who makes the news?

The project works through a remarkably collaborative model. Thousands of volunteers across more than 120 countries simultaneously monitor print, broadcast, and online news on a single designated day. They analyze who is featured as sources, subjects, and reporters, and whether gender stereotypes shape the coverage. The quantitative and qualitative data collected provides one of the most comprehensive pictures of media gender gaps available anywhere.

Key findings from GMMP 2025 🔗

The seventh and most recent edition of the GMMP took place on 6 May 2025 – exactly 30 years after the first monitoring exercise. According to findings released by UN Women, women account for just 26% of news subjects and sources across broadcast, radio, and print media. That figure represents only a nine-percentage-point increase over three full decades – and a mere one-point gain since the previous GMMP in 2020.

The 2025 data paints a sobering picture across several dimensions. Men’s voices continue to dominate in positions of authority in news coverage, particularly among experts and spokespersons. Women are more frequently quoted as eyewitnesses sharing personal accounts rather than as subject-matter experts. Coverage of gender-based violence – studied as a standalone indicator for the first time in this edition – accounted for less than 2% of all news stories monitored, despite the enormous global scale of this problem.

One area where progress has been more visible is in the newsroom itself. Around 41% of reporters in traditional news articles are now women, up from 28% in 1995. However, in digital media, that progress has essentially stalled. The GMMP findings also noted that journalism that actively challenges gender stereotypes is now at its lowest level in three decades of monitoring – a troubling sign of what many experts describe as a broader backlash against gender equality.

Why the GMMP matters 🔗

The GMMP’s importance goes beyond generating statistics. It is the sole data source used to track progress on Section J (“Women and the Media”) of the Beijing Platform for Action, a commitment made by UN member states at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women. Without GMMP data, there would be no systematic, global benchmark to hold governments and media organizations accountable on their commitments to gender equality in media.

The project also functions as an advocacy tool. By making the data publicly available, the GMMP empowers civil society organizations, journalism educators, and media regulators to push for evidence-based reforms. WACC carries out this work in partnership with UN Women, UNESCO, and the Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG).

The Learning Resource Kit for Gender-Ethical Journalism 🔗

Identifying the problem is one thing. Equipping journalists to do better is another. That’s where the Learning Resource Kit for Gender-Ethical Journalism and Media House Policy comes in. Developed jointly by WACC and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), this resource was launched in 2012 as a practical toolkit for media professionals, trainers, and media house managers.

The kit draws on the knowledge of media practitioners, educators, and communication researchers from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Pacific. It is available free of charge in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish – making it accessible to newsrooms around the world.

What’s inside the kit 🔗

The resource is organized into two books. Book 1 deals with conceptual and contextual issues: it explains why gender matters in journalism, examines the current state of gender in news reporting, and provides a framework for understanding how media shapes – and is shaped by – gender norms. Book 2 gets practical. It offers specific guidelines for gender-ethical reporting across eight thematic areas, including climate change, disaster reporting, economic news, health (specifically sexual and reproductive health), human trafficking, peace and security, politics and government, and violence against women.

What makes this kit distinctive is its central argument: ethical journalism and quality journalism are inseparable. Fair representation of women isn’t an add-on or a politically correct exercise – it is fundamental to accurate, credible reporting. The kit also encourages dialogue within newsrooms and between media organizations and civil society, fostering a collaborative rather than top-down approach to change.

UNESCO’s Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media (GSIM) 🔗

While the Learning Resource Kit focuses on journalism practice, UNESCO’s Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media provides media organizations with a framework for self-assessment. Published in 2012 in cooperation with the IFJ, the GSIM is a non-prescriptive set of indicators designed for voluntary adoption by media houses of all types, regardless of the technology they use.

The framework is divided into two main categories. Category A focuses on gender equality within media organizations – looking at things like gender balance at the decision-making level, equality in working conditions, and pay equity. Category B examines gender portrayal in media content, particularly in news and advertising. Each category is organized along five dimensions: user group, critical area of concern, strategic objective, indicators, and means of verification.

The GSIM has been adopted and adapted in various countries. For instance, Vietnam launched a contextualized version of the GSIM aligned with its national commitments to gender equality. UNESCO has partnered with major broadcasting unions and associations globally – including the African Union of Broadcasters, Caribbean Broadcasting Union, and Asia Pacific Broadcasting – to pilot the indicators within their member organizations.

The Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) 🔗

Individual projects and organizations can only go so far on their own. Recognizing the need for coordination, the Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) was launched by UNESCO and more than 500 organizations at the first Global Forum on Gender and Media in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 2013.

GAMAG is a worldwide, multi-stakeholder network that brings together media houses, journalism training institutions, unions, academics, gender activists, and civil society groups. At its peak, the alliance brought together more than 700 organizations and individuals from around the globe. Its first General Assembly, held in Geneva in December 2015, called for achieving gender equality in and through media by 2030 – aligning its mission with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

GAMAG’s focus areas 🔗

The alliance concentrates its efforts on three critical areas: safety and security of women journalists, gender mainstreaming in media and ICT policy, and ending the portrayal of violence against women in media content. GAMAG also works to ensure that the commitments made under Section J of the Beijing Platform for Action are systematically implemented and monitored.

One of GAMAG’s significant contributions has been the creation of a global cooperation framework. At the 2015 Geneva meetings, stakeholders agreed on the Geneva Framework on Gender and Media International Development Cooperation, which provides a basis for partnership among international donors, governments, intergovernmental organizations, the private sector (including media industry), and civil society. The framework was a direct response to the recognition that achieving gender equality in media requires coordinated, resourced, and sustained action across borders.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Ethical Journalism Initiative 🔗

The International Federation of Journalists, representing more than 600,000 journalists in 146 countries, has been a consistent advocate for gender equality in newsrooms and news content. The IFJ’s Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists explicitly includes the obligation not to discriminate on the basis of gender.

Through its Ethical Journalism Initiative, the IFJ addresses gender bias as part of core journalistic ethics – not as a separate social issue but as integral to fighting sensationalism, ensuring accuracy, and maintaining professional standards. The IFJ has also launched specific projects like “Rewriting the Story,” which provides practical tools for promoting gender equality both in news content and within newsroom structures.

The IFJ’s approach is significant because it frames gender-fair reporting as a professional standard rather than an activist demand. When the most recent GMMP findings were released, the IFJ urged its member unions and associations to reflect on the data, raise awareness among their members, and engage in concrete dialogue with media organizations about transforming newsroom cultures.

The role of UN Women and the Beijing Platform for Action 🔗

UN Women has been a key implementing partner for the GMMP since 2010 and plays a central role in holding governments accountable to their media-related gender commitments. The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action – specifically its Section J on “Women and the Media” – remains the foundational international policy document in this space. It committed UN member states to two strategic objectives: increasing women’s participation in expression and decision-making in and through media, and promoting balanced and non-stereotypical portrayals of women.

Thirty years after these commitments were made, the 2025 GMMP data – released in the context of Beijing+30 – serves as a reminder of how much remains to be done. As UN Women has emphasized, when women’s voices are absent from media, democracy itself is incomplete. The organization has called for a radical rethink of how media systems operate to ensure they contribute to, rather than hinder, gender equality.

The UniTWIN Network for Gender, Media and ICTs 🔗

On the education side, UNESCO’s UniTWIN Network for Gender, Media and ICTs brings together 19 universities to promote gender equality in and through media at a global scale. The network focuses on research, education, and participation, working to develop a globally relevant curriculum for the next generation of media practitioners.

The UniTWIN network is specifically designed to respond to the gap between awareness and practice. It works to equip journalism students and early-career media professionals with gender-sensitive skills – ensuring that the concepts of fair representation and non-stereotypical coverage are integrated into journalism education from the start, rather than treated as optional or supplementary training.

Why these projects and organizations matter together 🔗

No single project or organization can transform media systems on its own. What makes these initiatives powerful is how they complement each other. The GMMP provides the data that exposes the problem. UNESCO’s GSIM gives media houses a way to diagnose and address their own gaps. The Learning Resource Kit equips journalists with the knowledge and practical skills to report more fairly. GAMAG coordinates the global advocacy effort. The IFJ embeds gender equality into professional ethics standards. And UN Women ensures these issues stay on the international policy agenda.

Together, they represent a comprehensive ecosystem of research, training, standard-setting, and advocacy – all working toward the same goal: media that reflects and serves the full diversity of the world’s population, not just half of it.

The slow pace of progress – a nine-point gain in women’s news visibility over 30 years – tells us that awareness alone is not enough. Structural change requires sustained investment, institutional commitment, and continuous accountability. These organizations and projects provide the tools and frameworks for that change, but whether newsrooms and policymakers actually use them remains the critical question.

What do you think? With women still making up only 26% of news subjects after three decades of advocacy, what do you believe is the single biggest barrier to gender equality in media – is it institutional culture, lack of resources, or something else entirely? And should journalism education make gender-sensitive reporting a compulsory part of the curriculum rather than an optional module?

References

1. https://waccglobal.org/our-work/global-media-monitoring-project-gmmp/
2. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2025/09/half-the-world-only-a-quarter-of-the-news
3. https://www.unesco.org/en/gender-equality/media-gender-equality
4. https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/gender-equality/article/wacc-and-ifj-resource-kit-to-strengthen-gender-ethical-journalism
5. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/gender-sensitive-indicators-media
6. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/hanoi/about-the-ha-noi-office/single-view/news/viet_nam_launches_contextualized_gender_sensitive_indicators
7. https://gamag.net/about-us/
8. https://en.unesco.org/news/global-alliance-media-and-gender-organized-their-first-general-assembly-unesco-s-support
9. https://www.ifj.org/what/gender-equality
10. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/fostering-gender-sensitive-journalism-and-media-across-world