Male experts outnumber female experts by 11 to 1 on radio and television programs in Ghana. Data gathered by the Ghanaian Women Experts project between February and June 2021 shows that men dominate radio and television programs. The survey found that politicians, lawyers, doctors, university teachers, and men who called themselves experts and analysts dominated the programs.
Out of 1,476 experts featured on the six monitored radio and television shows, only 128 of them were female experts, representing just 8.7 per cent of the total number of experts interviewed on all the programmes.
While men dominated all the four Breakfast shows monitored, Starr FM’s Morning Starr interviewed more women experts than the rest.
The survey was conducted under the direction of Nana Ama Agyemang Asante and Betty Kamkam-Boadu, both freelance journalists in Accra with support and funding from the City University of London’s Journalism Department. The six programs surveyed are: Peace FM’s Kookroko, Citi FM’s, Citi Breakfast Show, Starr FM’s Morning Starr, TV3’s Key Points, Joy TV’s PM Express and Joy
FM’s Super Morning Show.
Nana Ama said: “ The study shows that despite being more than half of the population, 51.2 percent to be exact, Ghanaian women’s voices and expertise remain unacknowledged in the media. Producers argue that the disparity is due to a reluctance on the part of women to appear on shows, but the figures also show that male experts were given more time during interviews than women.
“It is evident from the data that policies, laws and other national programs are being framed by men for men. The media’s gender gap is not only unfair to women, but it also reinforces harmful and dangerous gender stereotypes.”
Source: 3news.com|Ghana