By African View Reporter | September 5, 2025
Women make up half of the world’s population and yet their voices and stories account for just 26% of media coverage worldwide. That stark reality was revealed in the latest Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) report, the world’s largest study on gender representation in news, released this week with UN backing.
“When women are missing, democracy is incomplete,” said Kirsi Madi, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women.
The study shows that while women continue to lead grassroots organizations, champion education, and drive resilience across communities in Africa, Asia, and beyond, their contributions are often overlooked or misrepresented.
The report states that too often, media narratives frame women only as victims, erasing their leadership and ignoring their role as problem-solvers in peace, development, and social progress.
The report expressed its concern on the near absence of gender-based violence (GBV) in mainstream coverage. The report stressed that: -
🔴 Fewer than 2 in 100 stories globally highlight the
abuse endured by millions of women.
🔴
Stories that do make headlines often rely on victim-blaming stereotypes,
portraying GBV as isolated incidents instead of a systemic issue.
This not only distorts reality but also influences public perception, leaving policymakers and societies without a full picture of the crisis.
Representation is even more limited for women from minority groups: racial, ethnic, or religious. Only 6% of people featured in news coverage globally come from such groups, and of them, just 38% are women.
In practice, this means the chance of a woman in the news being from a minority community is less than 1 in 10.
Despite the slow pace of change, there are rays of hope. Digital media is helping close the gap:
But as UN Women stressed, little to no progress has been made in three decades of tracking representation. With the UN’s 80th General Assembly on the horizon, the urgency to place gender parity at the center of media and policy conversations is more pressing than ever.
✊ Why It Matters for Africa
For Africa, home to some of the most dynamic women leaders, entrepreneurs, journalists, and activists, the report is a wake-up call. Ensuring women’s stories are told fairly and fully is not only a question of justice but also a foundation for a stronger democracy, deeper economic growth, and lasting peace.
Because when women are silenced, half the story is missing.
Source UN Women
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