"Women’s rights are under siege. The poison of patriarchy is back – and it is back with a vengeance: slamming the brakes on action; tearing-up progress; and mutating into new and dangerous forms. But there is an antidote. That antidote is action." These opening remarks of the UN Secretary-General at the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) this month, reverberate with their starkly dark and emotive undertones.
Has this well-documented backlash against women spreading across the global north and south – from the US' severe curtailing of women's reproductive rights to South Korea’s feminism censorship to Afghanistan’s gender apartheid – been reflected in the news coverage globally?
In other words, has news coverage of gender equality-related topics increased in recent years to reflect the growing challenges that women face globally?
To answer this question, my consultancy AKAS and I analysed the last eight years’ global news coverage of gender-related issues on International Women’s Day (IWD) which occurs on 8 March every year. In any given year, this day is the apex of news attention centring on women. But the results were not only informative but revelatory.
Some key numbers:
- Global news coverage of gender-related issues on IWD has remained low and static in the last eight years, hovering at around 3 per cent of all news coverage.
- Just 1.1 per cent of all US online news coverage on 8th March 2025 explicitly referenced gender-related terms, less than that in Saudi Arabia (1.3 per cent).
- US online news coverage of gender-related issues on IWD was also three times lower than its peak in 2017 (3.8 per cent) and the current global average (3.4 per cent).
- This year’s coverage in the G20 countries was lowest in Russia, Indonesia, China and South Korea. Three of these countries are defined as flawed democracies or authoritarian regimes.
- Coverage of gender-related issues has more than halved in Canada in the last eight years, declining from a relatively high 6.7 per cent on 8 March 2017 to 2.9 per cent in 2025. South Africa has seen a similar steep decline from 6.1 per cent in 2017 to 2.3 per cent this year.
- In the UK, coverage of gender-related issues has remained relatively stable at between 3 per cent and 4 per cent. This year's figure of 3.7 per cent was a marginal increase on last year (3.5 per cent) and fractionally higher than the global average.
In short, global news coverage has not increased in line with the increase in women’s predicaments in recent years.
One might argue that at best, the news media has remained unaware or indifferent; at worst, it has turned its back on the growing challenges stemming from one's gender, confirming a key finding in my Missing Perspectives of Women report series. The news is a mirror of society and shifts its focus in line with shifting social norms, which at present are increasingly anti-diversity, equity and inclusion.
The latest Reuters Institute's Women and Leadership in the News Media report released this month reconfirms the existing male dominance in news leadership and newsrooms globally.
Around a quarter (27 per cent) of the 171 top editors across 240 brands and significantly less than half (40 per cent) of journalists in newsrooms were women (across 12 studied markets). This male dominance in leadership and newsrooms dampens the industry's alertness to stories that are important to women and their futures.
Our content analysis of 110 leading news brands’ websites in the UK and the US on 8 March this year revealed that a majority of UK (94 per cent) and US (91 per cent) news websites did not reference International Women’s Day above their homepage fold.
Only one news brand – the Associated Press in the US – has consistently referenced International Women’s Day above its homepage fold every year since 2023.
Gender issues on the cutting block
Francesca Donner, founder and editor of The Persistent (focused on telling women’s stories) and former gender director at The New York Times spoke to me about the collapse in the coverage of women on IWD in the US since 2017.
She explained that 2017 was “still a bit of a banner year for women’s coverage” due to the #MeToo movement gaining momentum, the global women’s marches and Trump’s first election putting the trust and treatment of women on the agenda.
But gender issues have wrongly been deprioritised due to declining news investments, combined with a particularly heavy covid-19 news agenda that has been getting heavier ever since.
"The collapse is entirely predictable," says Donner. "When costs get cut or a news cycle cranks up - like covid, wars or global instability - gender is always one of the first things to go. Newsroom sentiment often feels like this: 'we’ll handle the important stuff first and then we'll get to gender when we can or when things calm down'."
It is therefore no surprise that despite women’s societal standing being globally under fire, the appetite to focus more on the challenges women face and women’s stories is absent. This situation is likely to be exacerbated by the white-male-centric global news agenda linked to the US presidency and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza ramping up.
Why are Mexico and France streets ahead?
For further evidence, we turned our analysis to the global coverage of the UN’s 69th Session of the CSW this month, which peaked on 10 March when the Secretary General delivered his opening remarks warning that women’s rights were under attack and urging action.
We were curious to find out whether the event had received higher coverage this year than in the previous two years. Analysis showed that the peak in coverage was lower this year than in the previous two years (0.1 per cent of all global news online coverage vs. 0.2 per cent). Coverage of 0.1 per cent means that only one in a thousand articles referenced CSW.
Mexico and France have been standing out as positive outliers in their high proportion of coverage of gender equality issues on International Women’s Day since 2017. This year was no different, as both Mexico (12 per cent) and France (10 per cent) were far ahead of the global average (3.4 per cent) and third place Argentina (4.7 per cent).
To find out why this might be the case in France, I spoke with Megan Clement, editor of Impact, a bilingual newsletter of feminist journalism.
She explained that France has a very buoyant feminist movement which organises big street mobilisations twice a year – on 8 March for IWD and 25 November to mark the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Their goal is to keep gender equality issues in the news on IWD, which they are evidently achieving.
"This is the paradox of France. It has a very engaged feminist movement, a broad acceptance of certain tenets of gender equality, but at the same time there is no equal pay, and there are serious challenges with sexual violence," concluded Clement. She also acknowledged the steep rise of the far right in France - a key opponent to gender equality - over the last decade.
Journalists hate missing stories. They also care about meeting the needs of their audiences. The increasing challenges that women face in every aspect of their lives as a result of the rise of anti-equality movements represent so many stories waiting to be told by journalists who care for all. To identify all these stories, news organisations should investigate the social norms and values that are pushing in a dangerous direction – towards making women’s voices and experiences peripheral again.
By resisting the tide and maintaining diversity in teams and leadership rather than homogenising them, journalism can avoid missing those important stories. For it is homogeneity that leads to angles being overlooked and other stories being prioritised as more important, particularly when faced with an unprecedented news agenda.
How does the media shift the needle?
1. Please recognise that unless you are a newsroom dedicated to covering women, your coverage is male-lens-dominated. Fact. Therefore, whether you are an editor or a journalist, every morning ask yourself/your editorial team this question: "What stories or story angles relevant to women might we be missing?"
2. Examine the UN’s global days calendar and commission ahead of time stories that expose the challenges women face, such as violence against them
3. Depending on the volume of your/your team’s output, complete a week's or a month’s audit of your coverage, counting the proportion of women contributors. Redress any male bias you uncover by aiming for equal contributions
4. Scan publicly available opinion poll findings from research agencies like YouGov or Ipsos to identify stories that are particularly relevant to women
5. Ensure that you/your team tells more first person (micro) stories, with the big ongoing stories like the cost-of-living crisis or humanity’s AI-infused future being told through the eyes of female experts and protagonists.
Luba Kassova is an award-winning researcher, journalist and co-founder of audience strategy consultancy AKAS who covers equality, media, AI and social trends.
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