A Long March Toward Equality: Predicting the Presence of Women in Television News

Abstract

The (under)representation of women in the news has received much attention in scholarly research. Using a population dataset of news broadcasts in Belgium, this article describes how gender equality has changed over time (2003–2021) and investigates which factors explain the presence (or absence) of women as speaking actors in the news. The findings reveal a structural underrepresentation of women in the news, but a slow increase in their presence over time. Overall, women are more equally represented in softer news topics or in non-elite roles. Remarkable is that women journalists tend to interview more female sources than their male counterparts.