Data from the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) (2015) shows that in both written and television media, 68 per cent of news subjects are men and 32 per cent are women. Separated by type, in television, 35 per cent of the news subjects are women and 65 per cent men, and in print, only 23 per cent are women against 77 per cent men, as news subjects. Table 3 highlights the professions of sources called to speak on the news. There, we can see that women surpass men only in less-qualified positions.
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Hudson’s (2016) research, analysing the presence of women as sources in traditional Chilean media in 2014–2016, coincides with this. In her research, the ratio between male and female sources is 4:1, and she concludes there is considerable inequality in the representation of women in “hard news”. This, according to Hudson, corresponds not only to journalistic cultures, but also to the general reality of the country. Table 4, in such regard, compares media presence with the participation of men and women in three different areas of coverage.
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Zurita Prat (2017) studied newspaper covers and found that 77 per cent portrayed men, and only 18.4 per cent women – 4.6 per cent portrayed both genders. This study also highlighted how women appear slightly more often in tabloid covers than legacy media. As for topics, covers where women appeared frequently include politics, show business, crime news, and society. Men appeared in covers related to politics, sports, crime, and international news. It is important to consider it was an election year, and that the president of Chile was then Michelle Bachelet, which may explain the prominence of politics for women.
The main role given to women in Chilean media is representing popular opinion, as well as giving their personal experiences, against authority roles – such as spokesperson or expert – which are often accorded to men (GMMP, 2015).
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Antezana Barrios (2011) identifies feminine roles within Chilean news shows; for women presenters, roles are “the professional woman” and “traditional lady”, while as sources, the roles are “the female victim”, “sensual woman”, and “professional woman”. This represents a rather limited framework for roles, where the male gaze dominates.
Coverage of women in Chilean media has also been a concern for academia. One of the focuses has been the coverage of femicides, where Antezana Barrios and Lagos Lira (2015) analyse a narrative associated with these stories. They demonstrate how violence against women is normalised in the search to justify the culprit’s actions in the story, questioning the woman’s autonomy. The same researchers studied the coverage of abortion in Chile (Antezana Barrios & Lagos Lira, 2019) where, equally, the press frames women negatively.
Gender equality in media coverage is a concern for several entities in Chile:
- UNESCO, in conjunction with Chilean universities, published the handbook Por un periodismo no sexista: pautas para comunicar desde una perspectiva de género [For a non-sexist journalism: Guidelines to communicate with a gendered perspective] (Alberti Garfias et al., 2010).
- The government also published a guide for non-stereotypical communication (SECOM & SERNAM, 2016).
- The collective of women communicators Mujeres en el medio [Women in the media], together with the Gender and Equality Observatory, published Guía de definiciones y prácticas periodísticas para medios no sexistas [Guide of definitions and journalistic practices for non-sexist media] (Gutiérrez González & Maureira Martínez, 2018).
- The National Television Council commissioned a study about good gender practices on the international level (Lagos Lira, 2010) and published a guide with advice on how to medially deal with subjects of sexual orientation and gender identity.
- The National Association of Women Journalists created a handbook to promote gender equality in media (ANMPE, 2020).
- The NGO Hay Mujeres [There are Women], seeks to increase the participation of women experts in media.
The information extracted from the interviews shows these efforts are yet to permeate newsrooms. There are no policies in this regard, and it is up to each editor and journalist to choose sources, with them prioritising the balance of different political tendencies over other efforts, such as women’s representation.
