Gender Progress in South African Media Masks Persistent Power Coverage Gaps

WOMEN’S VOICES IN SOUTH AFRICAN NEWS HAVE DOUBLED, BUT POWER BEATS REMAIN MALE-DOMINATED

Seventy years after women marched to the Union Buildings, Gender Links has released research showing that South Africa’s media institutions have made measurable progress on gender representation, while accountability gaps persist in the coverage areas most closely tied to authority and decision-making.

The 2026 Gender and Media Progress Study examined 2,060 news items from more than 200 outlets across print, online, television and radio platforms in Southern Africa. Its central finding: women’s representation as news sources in South Africa has risen from 19% in 2003 to 40% in 2026, placing the country second among 16 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states, behind only Eswatini at 47% and well above the regional average of 29%.

The aggregate figure, however, obscures a more troubling pattern in the beats that matter most to governance coverage.

Women accounted for just 30% of political and government sources, 31% of business and economy sources, 29% of legal sources, and 33% of expert sources and commentators. These are the categories through which institutional authority is communicated, policy is explained and accountability is exercised in public discourse. In each of them, men remain the dominant voices.

The disparity sharpens when source type is examined. Women made up 65% of sources sharing personal experiences. That proportion fell to 42% among spokespersons and dropped again to 33% among experts and commentators. The data points to a structural distinction: women are more likely to be heard recounting individual stories than to be recognized as authorities on systemic or institutional questions.

Meanwhile, women now constitute 52% of South African reporters, a figure that exceeds the 42% regional average. But representation in the newsroom has not translated evenly into editorial influence or source selection. Tabetha Kanengoni, Gender Links Director of Programmes, drew the distinction plainly. “More women reporting the news is important progress, but it does not mean they have equal influence over editorial decisions or that more women are heard,” she said. “Real change depends on who sets the news agenda, who is recognised as an expert and whose perspectives make it into the story.”

Platform-level data adds another layer of structural concern. Women comprised 77% of radio reporters but only 23% of online reporters. That gap points to differences in how newsrooms across platforms hire, assign and promote women journalists, and raises questions about which editorial environments are genuinely open to women’s advancement.

Visual representation produced a similarly mixed result. Two-thirds of South African news images challenged gender stereotypes, yet men and boys remained the dominant visual subjects, appearing as the main focus in 55% of images. Women and girls accounted for 22%, with 21% featuring a gender-balanced mix. Regionally, the imbalance was more pronounced: 58% of images predominantly featured men and boys.

On editorial approach, 37% of South African stories were classified as gender aware, compared with 27% across the SADC region. The majority of coverage, 57% in South Africa and 59% regionally, remained gender blind.

Gender Links framed the findings as a measure of compliance with Article 29 of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, which mandates that media give women and men equal voice across all coverage areas. No SADC country has yet achieved that standard. Women’s representation as news sources ranged from 47% in Eswatini to 15% in Angola, a spread that reflects the uneven pace of institutional change across the region.

The research was released on SADC Day, timed to coincide with the 46th Ordinary SADC Summit and South Africa’s assumption of the SADC Chairship for 2026/27, as well as Women’s Month and the anniversary of the 1956 march. Colleen Lowe Morna, Gender Links special advisor, stated that “whose voices are heard in the news remains an urgent equality issue” seven decades after women claimed their place in South Africa’s public life.

The study complements the 2026 Glass Ceilings research published by the South African National Editors’ Forum, which examines women’s advancement within media organizations. The Gender and Media Progress Study focuses on what audiences actually see and hear in news content, a distinction that matters when assessing whether institutional reform has reached the output stage.

Conducted every five years since 2003, the study provides more than two decades of comparable data. The 2026 monitoring was conducted on 28 May and, unlike previous editions that tracked coverage over a month, offers a single-day snapshot of gender representation across regional news. Whether that snapshot reflects a durable shift in editorial norms, or a moment that will look different when the next five-year cycle arrives, is the question the data cannot yet answer.