A 2025 study by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), an international body coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) in collaboration with the Media and Gender Enlightenment Initiative (MEGEIN), has decried the continued underrepresentation of women in media reporting, production, and as news sources. The National Coordinator of GMMP-Nigeria, Prof. Nkem Fab-Ukozor, alongside Dr. Alexander Onyebuchi, made the report available to The Guardian on Tuesday.
Fab-Ukozor explained that WACC is an international non-governmental organisation that promotes communication for social change. She noted that data for the 2025 monitoring exercise were collected voluntarily by hundreds of organisations, including gender and media activists, grassroots communication groups, university researchers, students, journalists, media associations, alternative media networks, and faith-based groups. MEGEIN, she added, has participated in the GMMP for over two decades and was also actively involved in the 2025 edition. She said the media monitoring project has been conducted in 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025 editions.
According to the report, over 120 national, regional, and sub-regional newspapers were reviewed in the print category. These included The Punch, ThisDay, Vanguard, The Nation, Daily Sun, and The Guardian. In the broadcast and online categories, about 740 outlets were sampled, including Arise TV, Channels Television, NTA News, Hot FM, Mainland FM Lagos, and Radio Nigeria, as well as online platforms such as Sahara Reporters, Legit.ng, PM News, and Daily Post.
The project also expressed concern over the weak implementation of Nigeria’s National Policy on Women and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as the country’s Affirmative Action framework, which it said has been largely undermined since 2015. The monitoring focused on nine thematic areas: politics and government, economy, science and health, social and legal issues, crime and violence, gender-based violence, celebrity and arts, sports, and others.
It noted that Nigeria ratified and adopted a national policy on women in 2000 in line with the 1979 CEDAW framework to promote gender equality, but lamented its alleged poor implementation by successive governments since 2015. Explaining the methodology, the report stated that the GMMP 2025 research on gender in the news was conducted on May 6, 2025, across 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The monitoring captured news content across print, radio, television, and internet-based platforms, providing a snapshot of the regional media landscape on the monitoring day.
On gender representation, the report observed that less than 20 per cent of stories reflected gender equality, human rights, or policy issues, describing the situation as worrisome. It further noted that apart from politics and government, there were no television stories focused on gender equality or human rights policy during the monitoring period. The report also revealed that women featured mainly in politics and government, as well as crime and violence, while their presence in areas such as the economy, science, health, celebrity, and arts remained minimal.
On media authorship, the study found a gender imbalance among reporters, noting that male journalists were more likely to report on gender inequality issues than their female counterparts. It added that men dominated news reporting across most platforms, particularly in print media. The report concluded that women remain underrepresented both as journalists and as news subjects, urging greater attention to gender inequality in media practice and content.
