Thirty years after the global community pledged to use the media as a tool for equality, the recent circumstances tell a different story.
In today’s world, violence against women is underreported due to a steep decline in media coverage of women and girls, as well as pervasive misogynistic harassment.
Representing less than 2 percent of all news stories globally, the visibility of gender-based violence (GBV) has reached a critical point, leaving the most pervasive human right violation of our time effectively invisible.
The new research titled The Global Misogyny News Coverage Tracker: The Missing Misogyny-related Coverage in an Era of Endemic Violence against Women, gathered data from an analysis of 1.14 billion online stories published globally between 2017 and 2025. As per findings, global coverage of misogynistic abuse plummeted to a “dismal” 1.3 percent of all global online news in 2025.
The figure shows a departure from the period when the media coverage peaked at 2.2 percent in 2018 driven by MeToo movement, as reported by the Guardian.
In Africa, coverage fell to 1.18 percent in 2024, despite extreme levels of sexual violence in regional conflicts.
Prof Julie Posetti, the chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London, said, “It is shocking, particularly considering the scale of the problem and the ways in which violence against women and misogyny have been weaponised by authoritarian actors as part of the rollback of rights.”
“It signals a failure by the press … how little progress we’ve made and how far we have to go,” she added.
Epstein files and missing ‘gender-inequality lens’
The report, the first of its kind, also explored the media’s failure to report on and address the structural nature of misogyny.
According to Luba Kassova, lead author of the report, media coverage related to Epstein’s story also contained the missing element of violence against women, highlighting “news coverage does not get to the root causes of the problem.”
Similarly, the countries where women experience high levels of violence and misogynistic abuse, are also showing steep decline in reporting these issues effectively.
Rise of ‘gender ideology’
While reporting on violence against women and girls declined, the use of the term “gender ideology”, often used by anti-equality movements to undermine women’s rights, increased 42-fold between 2020 and 2025, particularly in the US.
The report also identified the dominance of male narratives while reporting on the issues concerning women and girls. Research shows 1.5 men are quoted for every one woman.
Even among experts who talked on gender-based violence, 24 percent were men compared to only 17 percent women.
Sarah Macharia, from the Global Media Monitoring Project, said, “These stories hardly ever appear and when they do, we have seen that it is a male voice that prevails.”
Tech-facilitated violence
Statistics also show 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. With the rapid proliferation of digital tools and AI models, tech-facilitated violence against women has become a more pronounced reality.
As per report, up to 60 percent have experienced online abuse, which also have gone underreported.
What needs to be done
The report also recommends some solutions to improve coverage against gender-based violence. For instance, the media outlets must appoint female journalists and editors to lead the coverage without any bias.
It is also important to place survivors at the heart of the narrative rather than focus solely on the perpetrators .
“Until the mainstream press is fully equipped and willing to shift these norms, we’re not going to change anything.” Posetti said.
