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Women less quoted and less visible than men in Canadian news

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Summary of story from StraightGoods, October 4, 2011

Women accounted for only 25 percent of the people quoted in the French provincial print news, according to a recent study by the Regroupement féministe du Nouveau-Brunswick, the francophone provincial feminist organisation in Canada.

The study further found that women accounted for as little as 18 percent of all the people quoted related to government and politics.

As for health care, education and arts and culture, less than 40 percent of all the people quoted were women, despite the strong presence of women in these areas.

The study also found that most pictures featured with a news article were of men.

Sadly, such findings are consistent with findings in several other studies.

The Global Media Monitoring Project’s (GMMP’s) most recent report on Canada, released in 2010, found that only 30 per cent of Canadian news stories featured women.

Presenting the findings of the report, the authors wrote: “The news in Canada does not provide a mirror on our world. Instead it shows a world where crime is rampant, politics and governing is mostly of concern only to men, and women are almost unseen.”

The GMMP further found that Canadian journalists, both male and female, tend to report stories in ways reinforcing gender stereotypes, and that only five percent of all Canadian news stories challenge such stereotypes.

Women were also more likely than men to be identified in the story by their family status such as mother and/or wife and least likely to be identified as subject matter experts.

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