Islamabad (TDI): The share of women reporters in Pakistan fell sharply to just four per cent in 2025, down from 16 per cent in 2020, according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP).
The findings highlight how progress toward gender equality in the news media has largely stalled both in Pakistan and across 94 other countries.
The GMMP, conducted every five years, provides a snapshot of news content from a single global monitoring day. This year marked the fourth cycle in which the UK research centre acted as Pakistan’s national partner, collecting and contributing data to the world’s longest-running study on gender representation in news.
GMMP 2025 focused on news content from May 6, a day dominated by India-Pakistan military tensions. The conflict heavily shaped media coverage, leaving limited space for gender-related reporting. “No women reporters were recorded in television, radio, or internet news on May 6,” the report stated.
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The study noted that coverage of gender-based violence (GBV) remained minimal. Across all media monitored, only one story on GBV appeared, focusing solely on intimate partner violence and portraying the woman strictly as a victim. “No human rights lens or legal framework was applied,” the report added.
Women accounted for only 13 per cent of news subjects in 2025, down from 18 per cent in 2020. All stories that included women as subjects were reported by men, underscoring the ongoing bias in news production. However, the study highlighted one area of improvement: women’s representation in social and legal news rose to 20 per cent from 14 per cent in 2020.
Worldwide, progress on gender equality in news remains slow. Women now make up 26 per cent of people seen or cited in traditional media and 29 per cent in digital news, figures that have barely changed in the past decade.
Male-dominated political and economic stories continue to dominate coverage, while women remain underrepresented in sports (15 per cent) and expert roles.
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The study also found that women continue to be portrayed as victims at twice the rate of men, with a particular focus on domestic violence. While digital news shows a growing presence of women experts and stories by women journalists tend to feature more female sources and gender perspectives, less than 2 per cent of global news stories cover GBV.
“The 2025 findings show a media environment where change has slowed significantly, and existing approaches are not delivering meaningful improvements in gender equality,” the report concluded.
