“We’re 51% of the population. Why aren’t we featured 51% of the time as the experts or as spokespeople?”

Only 3% of news stories challenge gender stereotypes, according to a wide-ranging report on media coverage by the Global Media Monitoring Project.

This figure was just one catalyst that led to journalists Leila Hawkins and Alia Chebab joining forces to set up NADJA, a publication that focuses on putting women at the heart of their stories.

Named after the titular character of Andre Breton’s 1928 novel, NADJA seeks to offer the perspectives neglected by much of the media industry. Here, Impress chats to Leila about the publisher, the damaging stereotypes perpetuated in the press and how journalists can improve their coverage of women moving forward.

We wanted to create a platform that featured the perspectives of women and women’s achievements. We felt that there was a real lack of outlets where women were featured as experts and spokespeople as opposed to being portrayed as the victims or the caregivers or their relationship to men.

We felt there was a real gap there. We also didn’t feel represented in a lot of the coverage that we were seeing at the time and we also wanted to make sure we were covering things like politics and social issues and culture and not creating a lifestyle publication. It was very much celebrating women’s achievements and the strides that they make as opposed to what we generally see.

That figure comes from a big report by the Global Media Monitoring project, and they do this every five years. They’ve been doing it since 1995 and they analyse all media coverage, whether it’s from broadcast media, digital news sources, traditional media, and the figure has stayed pretty much the same since ’95. It’s remained static.

I think that it’s a reflection of the people who are in leadership positions in media organisations. I think it also reflects the ownership of those publications. In the UK alone, if you think about who owns the majority of our mainstream media organisations, they tend to be a male and wealthy. I think that is reflected in the editorial coverage that those outlets produce.

If you think about who owns the majority of our mainstream media organisations, they tend to be a male and wealthy

We can see it very explicitly in the US at the moment, right? One example would be the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos has made it very clear that he wants that newspaper to publish his opinions. It happens across the board I think too often.

So I think having more representative leadership, more women and more diverse newsrooms would certainly help to change that.

Funding and resource is always a challenge if you’re an independent small newsroom. I think that’s something you’ll hear from most grassroots or independent media outlets. We don’t have huge backers and deep pockets to draw from. So I’d say that’s the main challenge and with that comes time and general challenges with our capacity as well.

But I think on the flip side, it means that we’re able to be editorially independent, and we’re very proud of the fact that we don’t have to think about advertisers that we might offend, for example, or any kind of agenda. We can really be as truly independent as we want to be as a result.

We’re seeing a big rise in deepfakes. I find it really worrying that women’s images are being used without their consent for various nefarious purposes. I think that AI-generated content is a real issue because it’s helping to spread misinformation and disinformation.

On the positive side, I think that it can do the opposite. One example would be this organisation called Fixing The bAIs. We interviewed their founder last year and she’s actually created this image bank of AI generated images which basically features women in lots of different professions, and the aim of that is to counter that bias we often see with AI, which tends to sometimes show you very specific roles associated with genders. So that’s one example of AI being used for good to try and tackle that stereotyping.

AI could have a really positive impact on society if we are diligent with our use of it and are aware of how powerful it can be

There’s another organisation I can think of in the US called Feminist AI, and they’re doing really good things, looking at how it can skew search engine results for example and again trying to counter that by creating their own tools.

So it can be really positive. It could have a really positive impact on society if we are diligent with our use of it and are aware of how powerful it can be.

There is a big rise in gendered disinformation campaigns on social media and that’s really alarming because these are targeted efforts to discredit women online and discourage them from having a presence online.

And not just online. We covered this report from this really interesting organisation called Access Now a couple of years ago. They do a lot of really good work in this area, lots of research and it was looking specifically at Tunisia and how gender disinformation campaigns are being used to discourage women from entering leadership positions and from entering politics and that is a real worry. This is not just online, this is in real life.

The spread of misinformation is really worrying to me. Most people these days, especially young people, get the majority of their news from social media without it being verified and without any kind of fact checking which we’re seeing being removed gradually. That’s really damaging.

There is a big rise in gendered disinformation campaigns on social media

The other thing is that it can be used, I think, to deepen inequalities and deepen stereotyping generally. There was a really interesting report which was done by The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, and they found that Meta is showing certain job adverts to specific genders.

There are some positives as well. I think a lot of us, like young women, are using social media for good, for activism, spreading positive messages and positive campaigns as well.

But we need, we need some sort of safeguarding. There was a story that appeared on TikTok and it came from one video which was AI generated and it was taken as fact and amplified by citizen journalists who started creating their own videos talking about this particular issue and it just spread and spread and spread.

That’s the thing that concerns me the most about social media. It’s being taken as fact, and there’s no way to monitor or to verify whether what’s being spread and what’s being published is is real or not.

We need a big drive in terms of media literacy and education. It’s not going to be an easy task, but I think that is absolutely essential and we’re missing that. I think it should be taught in schools. I think we really do need to prioritise that. It’s so important.

We need to really question where our news is coming from. What’s the agenda behind it? Why is it being published? Who is publishing it? Do they have their own bias?

I think as journalists, we really need to prioritise that as well. I think we’re a little bit on the back foot when it comes to how our news is being spread and manipulated.

We need a big drive in terms of media literacy and education.

We have a really huge responsibility at the moment where we also need to make sure that we’re reporting stuff that’s accurate and questioning what our own sources are and why we’re saying what we’re saying. The public needs to do that as well, which is a big ask of them because it’s not meant to be the public’s job, but we, as journalists, need to start by doing that and encourage that as well.

I think the first one is probably quite obvious; hire more women. Hire women and people from different backgrounds. Make sure your newsroom is diverse.

I would suggest if you’re doing a story and you’re looking for an expert or a spokesperson, make sure you speak to a woman as well. Don’t just speak to people from one demographic. Try and include voices from underrepresented communities, different backgrounds, and different ethnicities. Just make sure that your coverage is representative of society.

If you’re looking for an expert or a spokesperson, make sure you speak to a woman as well

Something that I think about is the do-no-harm principle. Consider how the people that you’re writing about are going to be affected by what you’re writing. What language are you using? Question your own bias as well. Has your story been thoroughly fact-checked? Is it accurate? Does it feature different viewpoints? Is it balanced, or are you relying on your own unconscious or conscious bias? Are you relying on second-hand information or stereotypes?

There’s a lot we can do. It’s coming back to why we set up NADJA. It’s because these are the things that we wanted to ensure we were doing. We didn’t feel that there was enough of this kind of diligent reporting.

We’d really like to see a shift in how women are portrayed. Coming back to what I mentioned about women being framed primarily as victims or mothers or caregivers. We’d like to see a shift away from that.

Change that 25% statistic. We’re 51% of the population. Why aren’t we featured 51% of the time or 50% of the time as the experts or as the spokespeople?

I’d like to see an end to sexist headlines, which unfortunately are still endemic. We even saw really recently with Gisele Pelicot’s case in France. There was a headline that did the rounds where when the trial began it focused on her seeking revenge rather than her courage in waving her anonymity. That’s one example of many. Unfortunately, it’s still happening. We still see a lot of sexist headlines.

We’re 51% of the population. Why aren’t we featured 51% of the time as the experts or as the spokespeople?

We’d like to see more young women getting into journalism and becoming reporters, and from global majority countries as well. It’s such a competitive industry at the moment. We know that budgets are squeezed and newsrooms are under pressure. It’s difficult to enter journalism as a career, certainly much harder than it used to be, and wages don’t exactly grow.

So it’s difficult for people of any background to get into journalism but we would really like to encourage young women to see this as a profession and grow those more diverse newsrooms. It’s something that we are hopefully working towards with the training that we do as well.

Leila Hawkins is a journalist specialising in human rights, social justice and culture. She is the co-founder and editorial director of NADJA Media, a news platform addressing gender bias in the media, and has contributed to publications such as The Guardian, Vice, Refinery29 and Women’s Media Center. She also mentors and trains aspiring journalists.