The Ukrainian Women's Congress and StarLightMedia have completed a survey on the quality of representation and coverage of professional activities of women politicians and experts in the media.
The survey was conducted over two weeks in November-December and included a survey of women politicians, experts and media workers/women.
The key questions were the prevalence of discrimination, forms its manifestations and ways to improve the quality of representation and coverage of women's activities in social and political media materials. About 70 have joined the poll women politicians and media workers who work at the national and regional levels.
The results of the survey confirmed the urgency of the problem of discrimination regarding the coverage of political and expert activities of women. For example, more than a third of women politicians and experts have come across it from personal experience. More than half of the employees/workers of the media editorial offices confirmed that they noticed the discriminatory component in the media materials. Both groups of respondents noted that, according to their observations, the problem is more common in online media.
К The most widespread manifestations of discrimination in mass media materials were attributed by media people to lookism and objectification of politicians. So, among the examples given & # 8212; materials about dress style, beauty of women politicians, ratings of their attractiveness and leveling of their professional experience.
Politicians and experts themselves see the same problem. So, almost half of the respondents were faced with assessments of appearance, style, make-up, and care procedures when covering their activities.
More than a third believe that they were asked questions like a wife/mother, and not how to a professional … They were questioned by the media about the feasibility of their achievements (assumption of influential relationships/assessment of appearance). Common examples also include diminutive or “ you '' and sexist jokes.
Among the key reasons for the underrepresentation of women politicians and media experts, the media have named insufficient numbers of women directly in politics and expert activity and in the permanent contacts developed by the editorial board (indicated by more than half of the respondents).
More than a third of the participants noted the negative impact of a lack of editorial/journalistic focus on this topic. The five named problems also included the worst reaction of the viewer/reader audience and less recognition/popularity of women politicians and experts.
In total, the survey collected more than 40 ideas to improve the quality of representation and coverage of women politicians and media experts. Most often, the respondents drew attention to the need to develop editorial rules on gender-sensitive coverage of public and political processes, the presence of incentives for their implementation and public editorial statements in support of gender equality.
Development of such recommendations that can help editorial staff in their work and non-discriminatory representation of political and expert activities of women is the next stage of the project.
Organizers of the survey & # 8212; Ukrainian Women's Congress and StarLightMedia & # 8212; announce that a wider range of partners and experts will be invited to it. The principle of balanced participation of both media professionals and experts on the topic of gender equality remains key.
