Inclusion: Gender Content Monitoring in Selected Media Outlets in Bangladesh

"In order to achieve gender equality, both male[s] and female[s] should treat equally in every sector. As media is the fourth estate of a nation, it is the duty of media to work for achieving women['s] empowerment."

This series of media monitoring reports was developed as part of a project in Bangladesh that sought to investigate how different media represent men and women in their news content. The research, which was conducted by the South Asia Center for Media in Development (SACMID) with the support of Free Press Unlimited (FPU), forms part of the PRIMED (Protecting Independent Media for Effective Development) project in Bangladesh. PRIMED is a 3-year programme to support public interest media in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone that is being implemented by a consortium of media development organisations led by BBC Media Action (see Related Summaries, below, for more information).

The SACMID Gender Media Monitoring project forms part of the INCLUSION focus of PRIMED's work, which among other things, emphasises the monitoring of gender in media content, the creation of awareness among relevant stakeholders about the importance of gender equality in the media, and the formation of networks to strengthen advocacy with policymakers. SACMID has implemented various activities under this theme that, besides media monitoring, have included organising stakeholder and editors' meetings to advocate around gender equality in the media.

For the media monitoring, SACMID used a gender monitoring tool that is based on consultations with FPU, as well as existing international gender media monitoring tools. It consists of 16-19 variables that include: the gender of the reporter, the gender of the news presenter, the gender of the first person in a story, the gender of the featured spokesperson, the gender of the featured experts, the gender of the victims, the gender of those quoted, and how women are defined in terms of their family role (by the male family member's name or their own) and whether news stories challenged stereotypes. The study involved three media houses that were taken from a PRIMED intervention short-list. These are local newspaper Gramer Kagoj, online news portal Banglatribune.com, and Jamuna television. SACMID then chose three more outlets that are not directly covered by the PRIMED project activities: Dainik Purbanchal (daily newspaper), Jagone-ws24.com (online news portal), and Bangla Vision (television channel). These would be used to measure any changes in content between the two sets of media outlets after a certain period of PRIMED project intervention.

Monitoring took place from July 1 2021 until March 31 2023. In total, 9,409 news items from the six media outlets were included. SACMID published monthly and quarterly gender media monitoring reports that, in later editions, included comparisons of findings across quarters. The findings are summarised and presented (bilingual) for wider distribution in the following Inclusion bulletins:

• Inclusion, Issue 01 (July-September, 2021) [PDF]
• Inclusion, Issue 02 (October-December, 2021) [PDF]
• Inclusion, Issue 03 (January-March, 2022) [PDF]
• Inclusion, Issue 04 (April-June, 2022) [PDF]
• Inclusion, Issue 05 (July-October, 2022) [PDF]

The project also published "Inclusion, Position Paper - A Glimpse of Gender Status in Media News: Content Monitoring & Analysis of Six Media Outlets in Bangladesh (April 2021 - March 2023) Findings and Recommendations" [PDF, June 2023].

This position paper offers an overview of the research findings, as well as a description of the stakeholder and editors' meetings that took place between April 2021 and March 2023. It also offers some recommendations for the way forward for the project and outlines the future plans for SACMID's work to improve gender equality in the media. Overall, the findings show that:

• Bylined male reporters are nearly ten times higher than female reporters.
• Women are presented as news presenters, not as news producers, and the number of female presenters is increasing every quarter.
• Male first persons are four times higher than female first persons.
• Male spokespersons are almost five times higher than female spokespersons.
• Female experts were very much neglected by reporters while taking opinions from experts.
• The majority of females are more likely to be portrayed as victims in the news due to the existing violence against women in Bangladesh.
• The percentage of female voices is almost five times lower than male voices in media.
• The percentage of incidences when women are identified by their male family members' names is decreasing.
• A large number of stories did not challenge common gender stereotypes.

Recommendations that emerged from meetings with stakeholders and editors include, for example:

• Research sampling should be wider, and this kind of monitoring should be increased/extended to news media outside Dhaka. The entire news should be monitored, and a qualitative research approach should also be considered.
• At least 50% of media monitoring researchers should be female.
• Media workers should be trained on gender media monitoring, and media houses should develop in-house capacity so they can conduct their own gender media monitoring.
• There is a need to develop a list of gender-sensitive words (a kind of vocabulary), as well a list of words that can be used for transgender/gender-diverse people.
• A series of workshops should be organised with media house staff on the use of gender-sensitive language.
• As women audiences are increasing, women-centric media content needs to be increased.
• The number of female journalists should be increased, and they should be involved in reporting on more challenging issues such as politics and the economy.
• Every media house must have a gender policy, and there should be a national media policy based on gender equality.