South China Morning Post joins UN Women’s Media Compact to advance gender equality through journalism

It’s the first Hong Kong-based outlet to join alliance aimed at expanding focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues
While women make up about half of the world’s population, they remain sorely under-represented in the news

Lunar

Melissa Zhu

Published: 7:00am, 8 Mar 2022

Why you can trust SCMP

As the world marks International Women’s Day on Tuesday, the South China Morning Post joined the UN Women’s Media Compact – a global alliance of media outlets committed to scaling up the focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues.

Launched in 2016, the compact has over 80 media partners including the BBC, Politico and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Post is the first Hong Kong-based news outlet to join the alliance.

“We are delighted the Post is partnering with UN Women to champion gender equality and women’s empowerment as part of their Media Compact,” Post chief executive Gary Liu said.

“UN Women has been a great advocate for global rights and we are excited to contribute news content that raises awareness of the continued struggles with gender inequality in Asia and highlights the importance of ongoing advocacy.”

Women make up about half of the world’s population, but still remain sorely under-represented in the news. The Global Media Monitoring Project, which tracks gender equality in the news, found in a 2020 global survey that women accounted for 25 per cent of news subjects and sources in all forms of media – only one percentage point higher than the 24 per cent in 2015.

“Women represent only one out of four of the persons heard, read about or seen in the news,” said Sarah Knibbs, officer-in-charge for UN Women Asia and the Pacific. “Media outlets have the power to change that by scaling up their focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues.”

Diversity, equality and inclusion are at the core of the Post’s values and critical to the newspaper’s success.

In September 2019 we launched Lunar, an initiative to improve the representation of women in our coverage and better engage women readers. When the project first started, only about 35 per cent of our readers were women. By making a concerted effort to quote more women and pay more attention to what women are interested in reading, we have managed to raise the proportion to a far more balanced figure of about 45 per cent.

Women represent only one out of four of the persons heard, read about or seen in the news

Sarah Knibbs, UN Women Asia and the Pacific

The weekly Lunar newsletter curates stories about Asian women as well as issues our readers care most about – often intersecting with topics including stereotypes about masculinity, gender identities and LGBT rights.

In the past year, major stories from across the newsroom have included an investigation into image-based abuse in Asia, the plight of domestic helpers in Hong Kong who have tested positive for Covid-19, as well as ongoing coverage of the struggles of #MeToo activists and the trafficking of women and girls in China.

The Post also celebrates women trailblazers and encourages discussion on how to shape a more equal future through its annual Women of Our Time conference. Guests at this year’s two-day virtual conference – which starts on Tuesday – include Grace Fu, Singapore’s sustainability and environment minister, Japan’s former parliamentary vice-minister for foreign affairs Akiko Yamanaka, and UN Women’s assistant secretary general Anita Bhatia.

“We are pleased to recognise the efforts of the South China Morning Post in highlighting the voices of women across the Asia-Pacific region and welcome them on board the UN Women Media Compact,” UN Women’s Knibbs said.

Register to watch the Women of Our Time 2022 conference for free here, and sign up for the Lunar newsletter here. If you have thoughts on how we can improve our coverage of gender and diversity issues, please email Melissa Zhu, the project lead for Lunar, at [email protected].

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