It is generally accepted that the media plays an important role in promoting gender equality. But just how well is China’s media performing that role? Not very well, according to a short study conducted by China Women’s News.

Lu Pin, director of the Women’s Rights and Interests Department and a journalist with Chinese Women’s News, a daily published under the auspices of the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), monitored the coverage on men and women given by one of the country’s leading newspapers (“the newspaper”). She monitored articles published between May and July this year. During the course of her study, Lu kept count of coverage given to women in profile articles, special interviews, editorials and photo stories. She then compared her findings with results of a similar survey conducted in 1998 by her paper’s Editor-in-Chief, Feng Yuan, on the same subject. Eight newspapers were studied for the 1998 survey.

Lu delivered her findings to the Beijing +10 conference held in Beijing from August 29 to September 1. The following are the main points of her report.

Profile articles and special interviews

According to results of the 1998 survey, men were portrayed as heroes in 83.19 percent of the articles published. Moreover, most of these men were political and administrative leaders. Women were given just 9 percent of coverage.

Results from Lu’s study showed that of the 290 articles published in the newspaper, 56 profiled women, accounting for less than one fifth of the total. In addition, the women profiled weren’t necessarily leaders of their respective industries. They were mainly primary and high school teachers (eight articles), nurses, maids, and waitresses (nine articles).

Of the 93 special interviews conducted, only eight, or 8.6 percent, of the interviewees were women.

Lu concluded that there had been no conspicuous improvement in the coverage of women since the 1998 survey.

Lu’s study also showed that the newspaper quoted mainly men in relation to authoritative statements. The woman’s voice was practically “inaudible”.

Furthermore, women were rarely featured in columns of national significance such as the financial and business columns. In the three months, only one female economist was made the subject of an interview.

Lu found that there was a lot of coverage on women in their roles as educators and caregivers. Her conclusion was that women are only respected on a superficial level. Their low social status and earning potential are the reality, a reality that is perpetuated by the media.

Moreover, Lu found that the type of articles featuring women reflect this reality. According to her findings, stories on women in the “Life” column, of which there were seven, focused mainly on public welfare and volunteerism. Lu believes that this only goes to show how traditional society views women and their role in life; they must be kind, have hearts of gold and always be available to help others. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except that, in Lu’s opinion, this only goes to support the traditional thinking that women can only be associated with sacrifice and contribution to society.

Coverage of women’s issues

The 1998 survey results indicated that coverage of women’s issues in domestic newspapers was limited.

In Lu’s study, it was found that only 56 of the 9,000 pieces of news, including photo and headline news concerned women’s issues.

Lu found that reports on gender issues were also limited.

The draft amendment to the law protecting women’s rights was deliberated at the 16th session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee in June. There was considerable coverage of this by metropolitan newspapers at the time. But, by the end of July, Lu found that the newspaper surveyed had had little reporting on the subject. There was only one article on the topic, which was an interview with the Vice Chairwoman of the 10th NPC Standing Committee and President of the ACWF Gu Xiulian. By contrast, much attention was paid to the draft law on property rights deliberated during the same NPC session.

Further, Lu’s study showed that editorials or commentaries rarely focused on women or women’s issues. During the three months, only three articles touched on, whether directly or indirectly, the subject of women. One discussed the role of a mother in a Mother’s Day special, another talked about the eradication of Internet pornography, and the third was a criticism of vulgar entertainment programs, none of which directly supported gender equality and women’s development in China.

Photo news

During the course of Lu’s study the newspaper published 1,973 photos with people as the main subjects. Among them, 1,015 were photos of men. Women featured in only 330 of those photos. The other photos were news photos that merely reported factual situations.

The 1998 survey showed that men were the main subjects of photos. Even if women were subjects of a photo report, the reports were invariably linked to the entertainment industry. For photos used as complements to a report, men hogged the limelight. The survey further concluded that women were photographed more than they were interviewed, highlighting that the image was more valuable than what they actually had to say.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, November 7, 2005)