New tool to improve gender balance in Somali media

In Somalia, women are underrepresented as reporters, experts and subjects of news. But some of the media outlets that have historically featured mainly men’s perspectives in their reporting are slowly recognising the need to include more women’s voices.

The underrepresentation of women in media is being tracked by a new tool developed by IMS media partner Somali Women Journalists Organisation (SWJO). The tool makes it possible for media outlets to monitor the quantity and quality of ways in which they include women’s voices across platforms.

The tool also aims to track the ways in which women are represented:

— Are their voices included only as victims or also as experts?

— Are women featured only in stories intended for women audiences?

— Are they also included in general news coverage and features?

IMS has partnered with SWJO over the past eight years to support women journalists and amplify women’s voices in mainstream Somali media. The idea for the tool resulted from a baseline study IMS conducted which found that there was a gap between perception and reality: while Somali media managers believed that they were being inclusive, the reality was that their coverage showed otherwise.

In a country which ranks fourth from the bottom of UN Women’s list of gender equality in the world, it is crucial that media outlets make a concerted effort to change the status quo.

Participating Somali media outlets have begun to use the tool since a workshop in Mogadishu in December 2024.