Gender stereotypes remain firmly anchored in the media
Women are mentioned significantly less frequently than men in Swiss media reports. They are also portrayed less in professional roles, as the international media survey Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) shows.
Women accounted for 28 percent, just over a quarter of the people mentioned in Swiss media coverage, the Swiss Conference of Gender Equality Delegates (SKG) announced Wednesday.
The proportion did increase by three percentage points compared with the last survey in 2015. However, the media still depicted a gender imbalance.
Women are particularly grossly underrepresented in traditionally male-dominated areas such as business (25 percent) and politics (23 percent). The situation is somewhat better in reports on art and entertainment (38 percent).
There are also clear differences between the language regions. In Ticino, for example, the proportion of women in media coverage is 21.5 percent, while in German-speaking Switzerland it is 29.1 percent.
Hardly represented as experts
The survey also showed that women were less likely to be in professional roles or occupations with leadership functions, he said. For example, they made up only 20 percent of the female experts but 50 percent of the eyewitnesses.
On the reporting date, the proportion of women among journalists in Swiss media houses was 39 percent. This represents an increase of two percentage points since 2015.
The proportion of women is particularly high in television and radio. However, women there more often take on the role of presenter rather than reporter. For example, women account for around 53 percent of presenters and around 35 percent of reporters.
On the global cut-off date of September 29, 2020, 669 articles, posts and tweets from newspapers, from radio and television, and from websites and Twitter channels were examined for this study of media coverage from a gender perspective in Switzerland.
SKG participated in the GMMP of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) for the third time. The survey has taken place every five years since 1995. (SDA)
