Giving Compass' Take:

• A report issued by a Humanitarian Advisory Group highlights that female voices are not as amplified as they could be in the humanitarian media space. 

•  A large percentage of employees that work in the development sector are female. So what are ways that female voices can be amplified in spaces that they dominate in?

• Learn how more female surge staff can improve conditions for women in disaster response.

Gender parity in humanitarian media remains an elusive goal when it comes to both sources and reporters, new research by the Humanitarian Advisory Group concludes.

The paper, “Women’s voice in humanitarian media. No surprises” was presented March 8 at a Melbourne forum where media teams from humanitarian NGOs discussed how to better enable female voices in the media — an important tool to influence social change.

Within the media, the report found that female authors were more likely to quote female sources. Looking into humanitarian articles produced by Al Jazeera over a four-week period in Oct. 2017, they found that females wrote 51 percent of articles. Other specialized media outlets, which were not named in the report, had a lower authorship from women at 39 percent.

Though women tend to make up a large percentage of the humanitarian workforce, at the top the numbers shift in favor of men, Sutton explained. In promoting their organization, humanitarian groups’ media teams will often put forward an interview or comments from staff higher up. And if the top is male-dominated, the resulting media coverage reflects this trend.

Read the full article about amplifying female voices in development sector by Lisa Cornish at Devex.