The Case for Action: Gender Equality in Media Cannot Wait 

A policy statement

In the spirit of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month throughout March, we are taking a moment to name what a media landscape that works for everyone must actually look like, and what it will take to build it. 

Thirty years have passed since the Beijing Platform for Action placed gender equality in media firmly on the international agenda. The promises were clear: more women’s voices, more women in leadership, and safer environments for women to do their work. Notably, the original vision lacked meaningful recognition of gender-diverse populations, an omission to be corrected alongside other commitments that remain unfulfilled. 

Three decades on, the data tells a story of persistent structural failure. We no longer need just measured diplomacy, but also urgent political will and action. 

With this statement, we set out our position on three interconnected issues. First, the chronic underfunding of women-led and women-focused public interest media. Second, the escalating epidemic of tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and AI-driven abuse targeting women and gender diverse journalists and media-makers. Third, the stubborn absence of women from the leadership positions that determine what stories get told and how they are told. 

We view these three issues as central and essential to the architecture of a media landscape that is safe, inclusive and reliable. 

A persistent gendered gap between presence and power 

Women make up 40% of newsroom staff across the 12 markets studied by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, but they only hold 27% of editor-in-chief positions. This gap between presence and power is not incidental. It is the result of institutional cultures and funding decisions that consistently treat women’s ambitions as secondary. 

What is more, that these figures capture only a fragment of the media landscape. The Reuters Institute data draws primarily on established legacy outlets. Across the broader ecosystem of public interest digital media (newsletters, podcasts, community platforms, online outlets) systematic data on women’s participation remains scarce. What evidence exists suggests the structural imbalances are at least as pronounced and, in some contexts, more severe. This gets even worse particularly in regions where digital media operates without institutional infrastructure or formal protection mechanisms. 

At RNW Media, we believe that closing this gap requires deliberate structural interventions such as dedicated funding for women-led and women-focused media, digital spaces where women and gender diverse persons can work free from harassment and intimidation, and sustained investment that allows for women to remain in media and build lasting impact. We explain our position on each of these below. 

First: targeted funding for women-led and women-focused media 

The funding landscape for journalism has narrowed sharply in recent years. As media organisations face financial pressure, the instinct of donors is to invest in what already exists, which is overwhelmingly male-dominated media.  

Beyond this structural bias, policymakers have been slow to recognise how media is changing. Public interest journalism today is delivered through digital platforms, social media, podcasts and other online outlets. Funding frameworks must catch up with this migration of media voices to the online sphere and including updated definitions and rights into the policy texts. 

At the same time, growing polarisation in public discourse makes it more urgent that public interest media organisations can operate with adequate resources. Women-led and women-focused outlets often occupy precisely this space; they can challenge dominant framings and rebuild public trust in information by speaking truth to power. 

Research consistently shows that gender-diverse newsrooms produce broader, more representative coverage, which means that investing in women-led media is not a diversity gesture but a contribution to the quality and legitimacy of public information ecosystem overall. 

We, therefore, call on governments, international and private donors and funders to establish dedicated  funding streams for diversity in public interest media organisations, not token allocations or diversity footnotes in broader media support grants, but genuine structural commitments that recognise diverse media as a strategic asset in the information ecosystem, contributing to a more pluralistic, trustworthy and resilient public sphere. 

According to the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), media assistance currently represents only 0.3% of total official development aid, an already vanishing envelope that is further diluted when it comes to gender-responsive journalism. We advocate for that figure to grow substantially, with a clearly mandated proportion directed to women media-makers. 

Donors must also resist mistaking tokenistic gestures for meaningful progress. A special International Women’s Day supplement and a one-off training grant do not constitute structural support. 

The model for what meaningful investment looks like already exists. One example of this impact comes from our media training centre, RNTC. Mwazi Sakala was a trainee in one of RNTC’s media training programmes. Her transition from online editor at the Zambia Daily Mail to Secretary of the Zambia Media Women Association (and a voice in digital rights policy) was shaped in part by access to professional development funding through RNTC’s media training programmes. The investment in one individual created a cascade effect and made a larger-scale social impact. 

Finally, we call for greater transparency in how existing media development funding is allocated by gender. Without disaggregated data on who receives the money, holds editorial power and makes commissioning decisions, accountability is impossible. 

Second: treat TFGBV and AI-driven abuse as the emergency they are 

Online violence against women journalists has reached a tipping point. Global research by UNESCO shows that in 2025, 75% of women journalists experienced online violation in the course of their work. In 2020, 20% of surveyed women journalists linked online attacks to offline abuse or assault. By 2025, that figure had more than doubled to 42%. This is an escalating trend that is partly driven by digital spaces that dramatically lower the cost and effort required to harass someone at scale. 

The technology that was supposed to democratise information is being weaponised to silence half of the population. And this issue fits into the broader political context where women covering elections, corruption, conflict, migration, reproductive health and other socio-political issues are targeted and silenced. A third of women journalists have considered leaving their jobs due to online attacks. It is important to note here, that the consequence is not only lost careers, but a narrowing of the perspectives that shape public discourse. 

On this front, we make two specific demands: 

1. Big Tech accountability must be treated as non-negotiable. Those who profit from the attention economy cannot continue to disclaim responsibility. We support binding regulatory frameworks that require online platforms to act on reports of abuse and audit algorithmic amplification of gendered abuse. 

2. We call for dedicated legal recognition of tech-facilitated violence against women and gender diverse journalists as an attack on press freedom. The existing frameworks are too narrow and lack the nuance required to address the specific, gendered nature of this harm. 

Third: build capacity, create access and sustain women and gender diverse leadership 

The barriers women and gender diverse persons face in media are not only structural. They are also rooted in unequal access to the tools, skills and networks. In a rapidly changing media landscape, AI, data journalism and platform-specific storytelling skills are becoming increasingly essential. Women must not be left behind in acquiring them and they must not be excluded from shaping if, when and how these tools are used. 

We call for sustained investment in capacity-building and leadership development for women and gender diverse persons in media. This means multi-year programmes that combine digital and AI literacy with skills development and mentorship to access professional networks. Sponsorship programmes can incubate women’s initiatives and open doors that mentorship alone cannot: where mentors offer advice, sponsors use their own professional capital to advocate for a person’s advancement. 

In Mwazi Sakala’s case, more than a decade after her initial RNTC training, she continues to recommend similar opportunities to younger journalists. She has become, in effect, an informal pipeline herself; sharing knowledge, opening doors, demonstrating through her own career what women can achieve in digital media leadership. Through RNTC’s Digital Media Leadership course, we are actively calling on funders, media organisations and media-makers to invest in leadership development specifically for women and gender-diverse media-makers. The course does it by giving media professionals the skills, mindset and strategic capacity they need to lead digital transformation and navigate the complexities of online media landscapes. 

Collectively, these policy positions and recommendations emphasise that advancing gender equality in media is not just about reform. Rather, it is essential to building inclusive public interest journalism and resilient democracies.