The missing perspectives of women in COVID-19 news
Luba Kassova |
TEDxJohannesburgSalon
• December 2020
Luba Kassova has been investigating to what extent the voices of women in six countries across the world - Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, the UK, and the US - find expression in the news on important matters, including how COVID-19 impacts their lives. She reports a disappointing and painful truth: the voices of women continue to go largely unheard by the most powerful sectors of society, including the news media. The plain fact is that we live in societies where patriarchal norms still dominate or linger in our collective consciousness. These norms are mirrored in news organisations and news coverage. The result is that news today is still predominantly a man’s affair, whether in the global north or the global south. This remains the case even at a time when women around the world have been hit particularly hard across many dimensions by the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. For Luba, the most heart-breaking consequence is that the situation seems exceedingly difficult to fix, given that, as the data clearly shows, the world is not even seeing it as broken.