Gender equality is a basic principle in most news policy documents and is respected in daily routines. A significant change in recent years is the increased number of female sources in the news. In the mid–1990s, about 23 per cent of sources in leading news media were women. In 2018, the share of female sources had increased to 40 per cent. One possible reason is that there are more women in elite positions in Swedish society today, but there are also indicators of growing awareness of source diversity in newsrooms (Nygren, 2019). Several national newsrooms use gender metrics of their published editorial content as an instrument for change, and some even use software where reporters can check their content before publication.
Even if gender equality in media has improved over time and is generally accepted in newsroom work, these principles are not always easy to follow in dramatic news situations, where easy access to established sources and spokespersons often prove to be more important than strict gender principles.
