Women’s expertise is underused in news coverage of COVID-1

Kassova attributed patriarchal values as the greatest barrier to women voices in the news.

The underuse of women voices in the news coverage of COVID-19 affects their ability to shape policies that are being developed in response to the pandemic.

This is according to audience strategy expert, Luba Kassova, who says women’s scientific and political expertise is underused and undervalued in the news coverage of COVID-19.

“When women fail to shape the news frames or angles that means the policies that are being developed in response to the pandemic are going to miss women’s needs. That is the single most devastating consequence of the missing voices and perspectives of women,” Kassova said.

Speaking virtually on Tuesday, she unpacked research on the missing perspectives of women in COVID-19 news, which was conducted in India, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America between March and June.

Kassova attributed patriarchal values as the greatest barrier to women voices in the news.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Gender Social Norms Index data released in March 2020 shows that 81% of the population in South Africa holds at least two out of seven possible biases against women.

“The biases are centred around men being better political decision-makers, better at brokers of economic power or being more worthy of investment in education and to what extent women should have or not have autonomy over their own bodies.

“We are seeing that 81%, a vast number of people are biased against women and that is the patriarchal norm that is we are up against in every sphere of our lives and is trickling in newsrooms and decision around news coverage about COVID-19,” Kassova said.

She said despite women’s unique socio-economic, cultural, healthcare and psychological challenges, their share of voice in COVID-19 news is marginalised.

“Women face unique socio-economic and psychological challenges linked to patriarchal norms, which are often missed out of COVID-19 news. The increasing victims of gender-based violence (GBV) were reported in all six countries that we analysed during the research,” she said.

Other issues related to women include women being paid less, the burden of COVID-19 falling on their shoulders with unpaid additional hours, women being more likely to live in single-parent households with a high number of dependents and being primary caregivers in charge of home-schooling and parents’ and spouses’ health.

“Women’s share of quoted voice in COVID-19 news stories is between three and five times smaller than that of men. In South Africa for every woman that is on the news there are about four and a half men that crowd out her voice,” Kassova said.

She said although still far off parity, women’s share of voice was higher for non-COVID-19 stories than it was for COVID-19 stories across all analysed countries.

“The content analysis of 1.9 million stories across the six countries and of 12 000 publications including South Africa revealed that gender equality coverage is virtually absent from COVID-19 news,” Kassova said.

Women were much more likely to be used as sources of subjective views than as authoritative experts in COVID-19 news.

The study, commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation across six countries, was aimed at understanding the extent to which women were represented in news globally.

The representation was analysed through the perspective of three indicators namely; the proportion of women as sources news expertise, the proportion stories with women who lead in stories as protagonists and the proportion of stories that contain a gender angle within them. 

(With Inputs from South African Government Press Release)