A study conducted by the Ghanaian Women Experts (GWE) project has revealed that male experts outnumber their female counterparts by 11 to one on radio and television programmes in Ghana.
The survey, which was conducted between February and June 2021, found that politicians, lawyers, doctors, university teachers, and other men who called themselves experts and analysts, dominated the platforms and programmes monitored on six programmes, comprising four on radio and two on television.
The programmes were Peace FM’s Kokrokoo, Citi FM’s Citi Breakfast Show, Starr FM’s Morning Starr, TV3’s Key Points, Joy TV’s PM Express and Joy FM’s Super Morning Show.
It was conducted under the direction of Nana Ama Agyemang Asante and Betty Kankam-Boadu, both freelance journalists in Accra with support and funding from the City University of London’s Journalism Department.
Out of the 1,476 experts featured on the six radio and television shows monitored, only 128 of them were female experts, representing 8.7 per cent of the total number interviewed.
While men dominated all the four breakfast shows monitored, Starr FM’s Morning Starr interviewed more female experts than the rest.
According to Ms Agyemang Asante, “The study shows that despite being more than half of the population, 51.2 per cent to be exact, Ghanaian women’s voices and expertise remain unacknowledged in the media”.
“Producers argue that the disparity is due to a reluctance on the part of women to appear on shows but the figures also show that male experts were given more time during interviews than women”, she observed.
Ms Agyemang Asante said, “It is evident from the data that policies, laws and other national programmes are being framed by men for men”, pointing out that, “The media’s gender gap is not only unfair to women but it also reinforces harmful and dangerous gender stereotypes”.
For this project, the researchers defined an expert as any person interviewed because of their knowledge or authority including politicians, spokespersons and professionals.
