User:Celia jia12138/Women in media

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Women in Media

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Compared to men, women are much less likely to be included in the media globally. According to research, a minimum of twenty-five percent of news on television, radio, and in the press mention women as a topic. According to a 2015 survey, only 19% of news experts and 37% of reporters worldwide were women (Unesco, 2021). We recognize that this gender-imbalanced perspective of society has the potential to promote and perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes as behavioural scientists study the underrepresentation of women in the workforce. The media must change the way they portray the outside world, but who has the power to change the media itself?

Women working in the media face unnecessary and specialized dangers and increasing offline and online attacks. The gender-based violence they face includes online harassment, sexist bullying, physical harm, rape, and even murder.

Legal harassment is the biggest threat to female journalists, according to a report by the Coalition for Women in Journalism. So far this year, at least 72 cases of legal harassment have been reported to the CFWIJ (UNESCO, 2018). When the number of detentions is added, it becomes clear how the legal system can be misused to target and silence journalists, posing a severe threat to female journalists.

Another significant issue is harassment, which can happen online and at work. The sexual nature of the harassment women experience is usually rooted in misogyny, as evidenced by the numerous cases of rape threats and sexually explicit manipulated photos and videos that have been used to defame and disparage female journalists. The so-called "double onslaught" on female journalists is visible again: they are targeted both for their gender and their profession. For this reason, it is crucial to focus on the gendered components of the dangers to which female journalists are exposed. The harassment women journalists face, whether online or offline, threatens their right to freedom of expression and limits the diversity of opinion in the media.

In addition to documenting violence against women, providing forums for women's views, raising awareness of women's experiences, and ensuring that biases against women journalists are addressed, the media is key to promoting gender equality and eradicating discrimination (EUI, 2014).

Media pluralism and diversity of opinion are essential elements of press freedom. A genuinely free media can, therefore, only exist in a market that is not monopolized. Without media freedom and pluralism, citizens cannot control their governments or have the knowledge they need to make well-informed decisions (EUI, 2014). The right to freedom of expression and free flow of information is possible only if societies have unrestricted access to various media and freedom of choice by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil Rights and political rights (Rattan, 2019). In general, we can look at external media pluralism, which refers to the number and diversity of media content providers in a particular media market, and internal media pluralism, which refers to the diversity of content, the availability of different points of view, e.g. as well as the representation of different social and racial groups in society.

Media diversity concerning media functions such as information, education, and entertainment is called media plurality. Despite the rapid increase in the number of women working in the media in the whole world today, studies show that the top positions (producers, executives, editors-in-chief, and publishers) are still heavily dominated by men (Gogu, 2018). This difference is particularly pronounced in Africa, where cultural barriers and stereotypes still prevent women from pursuing the position of a journalist (e.g. travelling outside the home, working in the evenings, and covering topics such as politics and sports, which are considered part of the male sphere) (Rattan, 2019). According to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), female journalists are more likely to cover "soft" topics such as family, leisure, fashion, and art. Politics and economics are among the "hard" news topics less likely to be written or covered by women. Therefore, the level of female participation and influence in the media also has implications for media content, as female media professionals are more likely to reflect the needs and perspectives of other women than their male counterparts in the journalism and acting industry.