Why are women experts in the media still a minority?
Director of media engagement at Media Stable, John Solvander, looks at why the recent Women in Media Gender Scorecard results were so poor and why the industry needs to do something about it.
The latest Women in Media (WIM) Gender Scorecard shows newsrooms in Australia still have a long way to go in achieving gender parity in their news coverage.
According to an analysis of over 18,000 news stories on TV, radio and print across a two-week period in 2022, men accounted for 70 per cent of quoted sources and 66 per cent of experts in all news stories.
But does it really matter if men and their opinions are over-represented in the news? I would argue that yes, it does, especially if you want your news to show the broadest range of opinions possible, support critical thinking and want to see news with less bias.
It also matters if we are to encourage women to find their voice in areas of the media where men traditionally dominate, like finance, politics or in sport.
