Representation of women in the media reflects prejudice – 03/06/2023 – Novo em Folha

The way women are projected by the media and communication vehicles reproduces biases and prejudices present in society. From the female role at the forefront of the news to the choice of what deserves to be highlighted in their trajectory, vehicles reinforce biased and patriarchal patterns, according to a survey carried out by LLYC, a global communication consulting company.

The company carried out the study “Women without a name: Advancement of the presence of women in the media and the challenge that still remains”, which analyzed more than 14 million news items with explicit mention of gender published in 2022 in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile , Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, United States, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal and Dominican Republic.

The objective was to map how the visibility of female talent, fundamental for the promotion of gender equality, is portrayed in the media and to understand the relationship between culture and communication.

According to the study, explicit mention of gender is 2.3 times more frequent when women are mentioned in the text than when there are men.

The phenomenon was named “female surname” to denounce that, in general, the association of a job, sector or sport with male is socially naturalized, while the presence of women is generally not taken into account if it is not categorized as such. An example is the case of football (men’s) and women’s football, whose mention of gender only appears when it comes to them.

The study also found that women’s names appear 21% less in headlines than men’s. In the case of topics such as sport, science, leadership or cinema, the female name appears 40% less than that of men in the titles. This pattern contributes to the weakening of the female figure as an individual, contributing to a generalization that leads to erasure.

An example would be titles like “A woman could be the new president of the United States” in their case, as opposed to “Barack Obama could be the new president of the United States” in their case.

On the production side, the survey points out that, in most countries in the world, men subscribe to 50% more news than women. In the analysis of authorship by country, up to 80% of the news are published without an author, while the signed news have, in their majority, a male signature.

In the Dominican Republic, men subscribe to three times more news than women, while in the United States they subscribe to 8% more stories than women. Portugal is the country where men and women subscribe to news almost equally, while Colombia is the only country where there are more women than men subscribing to news in five of the eight sections analyzed.

There is also a difference between men and women determined by publication themes. The health, events and society sections are where more women subscribe, around 45%. Sport, technology and economics have less female writing, around 25%.

This pattern can reinforce the idea that certain subjects are naturally masculine, needing to be specified when the emphasis comes from women.

In this sense, the study proposes that the use of “feminine” as a category can contribute to a wider dissemination in segments where women’s leadership is not very present. In addition, 50% of the news about them is accompanied by the “female surname”. Without the masculine differentiation resource, half of the production about them would disappear.

Another highlight of the study concerns female double victimization. Coverage of violence against women continues to focus on the victim rather than the perpetrator. In general, news about abuse makes the victims protagonists of the action, instead of highlighting the perpetrator’s responsibility.

Women are mentioned three times more than men when talking about violence and twice as often in situations of harassment. Even when it is mentioned, the term “woman” is 20% more likely to appear in the headline than “man”. This reinforces the idea that the responsibility for having been attacked is hers, not his.

An effort of sensitivity, ethics and coherence of approach in the information about sexist violence and the treatment of women in these matters is necessary, says the study.

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