L-R: Anik Raskin, Head of CNFL; Taina Bofferding, Luxembourg's Equality Minister; Dr Anissa Amjahad, PhD in political and social sciences;
Credit: MEGA
According to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), women remain largely under-represented in Luxembourgish media.
On Monday 4 October 2021, Luxembourg's Ministry of Equality between Women and Men presented the results of the Grand Duchy in the 2020 edition of the GMMP, an international study of gender in the news media.
Luxembourg has participated twice before in this project (in 2010 and 2015). This year, it was led at the national level by the National Council of Women of Luxembourg (Conseil National des Femmes du Luxembourg - CNFL) and the CID-Fraen an Gender centre.
Concretely, on a randomly chosen control day (29 September 2020), 22 monitors systematically recorded data present in the main information disseminated by a sample of media. The result of this evaluation was the subject of the final report, which showed that women are still largely under-represented in Luxembourgish media.
During the presentation of the study results, Luxembourg's Minister of Equality between Women and Men, Taina Bofferding, recalled the impact of the media on our perceptions. “Overall, the survey revealed that women and girls only cover a quarter of the people represented in the selected articles. Although it is necessary to differentiate between the different media (written press, audiovisual media, online media) as well as the specific themes presenting some nuances in favour of the female sex, female representation has hardly improved compared to previous editions”, the minister noted.
According to the executive director of the CNFL, Anik Raskin, the GMMP "represents a snapshot and reflects the place occupied by women and men in our societies and therefore in the media. Beyond this observation, it allows us to question the role that each and every one of us plays or wishes to play in the promotion of gender equality".
Dr Anissa Amjahad, who has a PhD in political and social sciences, presented the detailed results of the study which showed that beyond the low number of women in the media, the "places" they occupy in reporting are generally less prestigious than those of men. She recalled that these results are part of a global context of inequalities in the representation of women in the media. 116 countries, including 32 European countries, participated in the 2020 edition of the GMMP. The general conclusions at the global and European level were similar to those in Luxembourg. According to Dr Amjahad, global indicators are moving too slowly or stagnating in such a way that it is estimated that at this rate, it will take 67 years, globally, to reduce the average gap between men and women in traditional media.
Minister Taina Bofferding concluded that the media sector must become an active partner in the fight against gender stereotypes. "That is why I will soon begin a dialogue with professionals in the sector, in particular the Press Council, to discuss the avenues leading to a balanced representation of the sexes in the Luxembourg media, while respecting the principle of freedom of the press".
