11 August 2024, Glenda Daniels, Daily Maverick
To be honest, I can’t stand writing about justice for women, equality for women, safety for women, more voice for women. Why? Because these should be normalised by now; we shouldn’t have to be shouty about this in the year 2024.
Only 18% of voices during the election period were those of women experts, according to Media Monitoring Africa’s (MMA’s) research done in July 2024 on the media and the 2024 national election.
“An interesting element of the monitoring was that initial results showed 14% women’s voices, which is the lowest percentage of women’s voices we have seen in media coverage during elections. It was a positive move that the number increased to 18% overall. However, this is still far below the global average of 24%, and lower than previous election periods, where women’s voices usually account for 21% to 22% of sources,” said Thandi Smith, head of programmes at MMA.