Gender and the Media

Stefi, would you happen to know the name of the Swedish broadcaster that the last speaker (I think her name was Margaret) mentioned? Apparently their viewer-/readership had increased after their management made a concerted attempt at equalising gender coverage in their broadcasts.

That is a very interesting case study and might provide some useful lessons for other organisations which might be see-sawing on this issue.

Hello Alicia,

This is Margaret Gallagher - who made the comment about the Swedish broadcaster (and I wrote the GMMP 2005 report). The broadcaster is SVT (the Swedish public service broadcasting organisation), and I was talking about a television news programme called 'Västerbottensnytt'. It's the regional news programme for Västerbotten in the northern part of Sweden. In 2001 the editorial team set out to achieve gender balance among the people interviewed in the news. By 2005, across the year as a whole women were 44% of interviewees in 'Västerbottensnytt' - well above average for television news in Sweden. Women's share of the viewing audience for the programme also increased, with women ahead of men by five percentage points. They have recently extended this approach to a regional debate programme called 'Reagera' (React). In autumn 2005, across their 10 shows (28 minutes in length) they had 50% men and 50% women. The editor in chief, Patrik Oksanen, told me: 'We had that as a goal, and with the local equality ombudsman as a researcher and me as an editor it was easy to accomplish, and never an issue with the staff'. They've also been working with the editorial staff on the national news programme 'Aktuellt', to have the approach adopted there.

Patrik's view is that this is not difficult to achieve - as long as you are serious about it, monitor the output regularly, and make sure that the journalists understand that this is the goal.

Margaret

Dear Margaret, thank you for this information and your incredible work with the report. I took a copy away with me yesterday and have been going through it.

I have another related question about SVT (if you don't mind), on the political economy behind Patrik/the SVT higher ups taking that decision - how did this idea germinate in the first place? What was their motivation to make such major changes, was it purely the ideal of equal gender representation in the news that created the tipping point?

Many thanks!

Hello again Alicia,

SVT was one of the first public service broadcasters in Europe to adopt an equal opportunities policy (in the mid-1980s). So they have been taking these questions seriously for a long time. They have been involved in various European projects aimed at increasing and improving portrayal of women in their output. I can't tell you precisely how this particular initiative came about, but I guess that if you are serious about fair gender portrayal and you look at the statistics for your output which show that, after all this time, women are still consistently under-represented, you know that some concrete steps have to be taken. Just waiting, and hoping for the best, isn't going to work. You could contact Patrik Oksanen directly for more info, and I'll send you his email contact separately.

Margaret