Women Predominantly Miss In Headline Stories Of Newspapers in East Africa – Report

A report by the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications, titled 'The State of Women in the Media: Coverage and Framing of Women in East African Media,' highlights a significant gap in the representation of women across crucial sectors—political, economic, business, and entrepreneurial—in newspapers, TV, and digital platforms in East Africa. For example, Kenyan women are neither mentioned nor covered in most of the headline stories with 23 % of the sampled days having no mention or coverage of women in Kenyan newspapers. “The findings reveal troubling disparities while women constitute a significant portion of the media workforce, they are disproportionately under-represented in key areas, particularly in the creation and dissemination of news stories. Even more concerning is the fact that a significant majority of the stories covering women are authored by male journalists highlighting a critical imbalance in perspectives and narratives,” noted Prof. Nancy Booker, Dean at the Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC).