EqualVoice Factor: Women are more visible in Ringier media
Ringier's EqualVoice initiative, launched last year, works to make women more visible in media coverage. The Factor measures how often women appear in articles in Ringier media. According to an initial assessment, the visibility of women in the publications of Ringier and Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland is developing positively.
Using a semantic algorithm developed by Ringier, the visibility of women in the online contributions of the media brands of Ringier and Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland is measured. This results in two objective key figures: Firstly, the "Teaser Score", which evaluates the visibility of women in images, headlines and titles. And secondly the "Body Score", which shows how often women and men are mentioned in the article text.
The online offerings of View, Observer, Balance, Cash, GaultMillau, Handelszeitung and Swiss Illustrated. For most of these titles, it was possible to include figures from 2018, so that the development can be viewed over time. The factor shows that the Handelszeitung recorded the biggest increase: It was able to increase the proportion of women in reporting from 17 to 24 percent.
Quantitative measurement - qualitative, individual measures
Beyond quantitative measurement, many newsrooms have taken individual measures and conducted more in-depth qualitative research. At Observer an internal analysis revealed that there is an unequal gender ratio in certain categories.
The Swiss Illustrated on the other hand, has focused on supposed details in the language and images and is developing a kind of guideline here. Project teams have been formed in all editorial departments to bring EqualVoice into everyday work. At View EqualVoice is also included in the reviews, and reviews of EqualVoice are regularly published.
The changes in detail
The EqualVoice Initiative was launched in November 2019 by CFO Annabella Bassler and is chaired by publisher Michael Ringier and CEO Marc Walder (Werbewoche.ch reported). The aim of the initiative is to promote gender equality and make women more visible in the media. The survey of the EqualVoice Factor is central to this. Other EqualVoice projects include the Expert List, Ringier's internal research tool for finding female experts, the EqualPyx photo challenge, which aims to generate images with more diversity, and the "Get Ready - Go Forward!" workshop for female experts, which supports women in expressing their expertise even better. An international expansion of the EqualVoice-Factor to other media brands is planned for the near future.
