‘Print and electronic media barely covered women-specific issues or challenges faced by female candidates’

Both print and electronic media channels propagated a personality-driven narrative focused on prominent women politicians during their coverage of the general elections and barely covered women-specific issues or challenges faced by female candidates.

This was highlighted in the findings of Uks Research Centre's month-long monitoring of the portrayal of women in the media during critical period of the elections. The findings were shared at a media dialogue held at a local hotel on Thursday.

Shahrezad Samiuddin of Uks said women-specific or related news items made up a mere 10 per cent of the coverage in the Urdu print media on February 8 and 9, 13 per cent in English, 13 per cent in news bulletins and 38 per cent in talk shows.

She said that they monitored media coverage to assess gender representation during Pakistan's 2024 elections. She pointed out that there was scarcity of women's voices as experts in the media coverage, stressing the need to diversify expert perspective for inclusive representation. Among the conclusions drawn from the exercise was the need to amplify positive stories about women in politics and bring improvement in portraying them in a favourable light, she added.

Shahrezad further highlighted that the coverage focused on major urban centres rather than regions in Balochistan, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. She said there was a disconcerting trend of sexual innuendos targeting women politicians and journalists and there was an urgent need for increased digital vigilance and measures to counteract online harassment.

She highlighted that the media plays a pivotal role in shaping perceptions during the elections, calling for media outlets to recognise the transformative potential of women in politics and foster a more inclusive media environment for democratic, inclusive and representative discourse.

Tasneem Ahmar, director of Uks Research Centre, shed light on the organisation's meticulous one-month monitoring of women-specific coverage on news channels, newspapers and social media during the 2024 elections. She said women needed a lot of media space, more than what was given at the moment. "If you take out percentage of coverage dedicated to women-specific issues by TV channels and newspapers, it makes up a mere five per cent," she said, adding women were not even included in talk show panels discussing issues related to women.

Ahmar said her organisation had also monitored the previous two elections. She mentioned that in 2013 it was only print and electronic media but with emergence of social media over time, challenges were increasing. She called for the media house to also show women who were making marks in various fields. "A woman doesn't need to be raped to be written about it," she remarked.

Senator Sarmad Ali highlighted that more women contested the February 8 elections on general seats with many of them securing victories. He said 30 per cent of the Punjab cabinet comprised of women and the chief minister and senior minister were also women for the first time, adding that there are women federal secretaries but we don't really see anything about them.

Former senator Javed Jabbar said media coverage reflected reality. "If women's participation is limited, it would not be appropriate to have more news about them when there is little participation on the ground. Wherever women are participating, such as in cricket and hockey, was not coverage proportionate to their presence? Coverage of the women's cricket team has been quite good."

He said that conventional and social media were undeniably closely related yet their nature and purpose were distinctly different. Therefore, it's essential to evaluate them separately, he stressed, adding that when referring to "media”, it's unfair to judge all forms uniformly because the criteria applied to conventional media differ significantly from those applied to social media.

Jabbar also questioned disparity in the ownership of media houses saying just one was owned by a woman. He said all news directors who decide which story is to be run were men, which was an irony.

Khuda Bux Arbab, senior news editor at the Express Tribune, said: "As journalists, we flow with the trends and issues, carefully selecting what constitutes news and what merits attention. External pressure cannot dictate our editorial decisions; we are resisting attempts to push narratives with specific agendas." Zaffar Abbas, editor of Dawn, Lubna Jerar Naqvi and others also participated in the discussion.