Reflecting Reality with the Earth Journalism Network
The Earth Journalism Network (EJN), a project of Internews, is a fast-growing membership community of nearly 15,000 journalists reporting across approximately 130 countries, including countries particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate and environmental change. Since 2004, EJN has provided its members with the mentorship, training, story grants, knowledge sharing and networking opportunities they need to produce more extensive and impactful reporting.
Overview
For this pilot project, initiated in 2019, Internews’ Earth Journalism Network tapped around 1,500 environmental reporters from its global community to analyze how women are included as sources in stories in collaboration with Reflect Reality. Since then, the results of the pilot project have been used to inform EJN activities in new projects.
EJN has long prioritized the inclusion of diverse voices in the reporting it supports, recognizing that women, gender minorities and other marginalized groups often suffer the most from the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, and have a crucial role to play in responding to those challenges. Including women’s voices has been a particular goal for EJN’s Bay of Bengal Climate Resiliency Initiative (2017-2021) and Asia-Pacific (2018-2021 / 2022-2024) projects.
As part of their pilot initiative, EJN put in place a rigorous tracking system to identify women’s voices in stories produced for both projects. This included tracking whether women were featured as participants, experts or sources, and if the stories touched on gender related issues. By analyzing how and when women appeared as sources, EJN sought to better understand the extent to which they were delivering on that goal.
EJN’s Asia-Pacific project covers a biologically, politically and culturally diverse region facing severe threats from air and water pollution, warming oceans and increasingly severe weather, among other things. Through its Asia-Pacific Project, EJN offers media workshops, mentorship, and reporting grants to support story production specific to the environment and natural resource management, as well as resources to help journalists and media outlets enhance their ability to report on these issues. Similarly, the Bay of Bengal Climate Resiliency Initiative focused on boosting climate justice and resilience by exploring new ways to bring environmental coverage to coastal communities across Eastern India and Bangladesh.
To begin the pilot project, Reflect Reality consulted with then-EJN’s Managing Editor, Sara Schonhardt, to help lay out the objectives and design of the analysis. EJN’s Asia-Pacific and Bay of Bengal projects were selected for assessment because they were the largest EJN projects and had story grantees regularly producing stories. Two activities were selected to be carried out as part of the pilot: benchmarking and a member survey.
Benchmarking
By counting the number of women sources in each story, EJN hoped to gather a collective picture of the gender gap in sourcing and observe potential trend lines to inform future outreach and capacity building. For this exercise, Reflect Reality worked with the EJN team to custom design a tracking spreadsheet to count the number of women sources in each story, across a representative sample of each program’s content. They also tracked other indicators, such as story premise and genre, gender of the author, and types of women sources (personal experience, eyewitness, expert/scientist, NGO/activist, and government/state official).
Source: Journalist participants of the Center for Women's Resources’ digital storytelling training on women and environment visit areas devastated by the 2009 tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) in the Philippines, to speak with women survivers. The training is part of the #HerStoryOurStory project supported by EJN at Internews. Photo credit: CWR
Member Survey
A survey was prepared and sent to a dedicated list-serv of EJN member journalists, inquiring about their thoughts on gender equality in environmental reporting and what they might already be doing to source women in their stories. EJN has since used feedback from the survey to develop activities aimed at addressing some of the needs outlined by respondents.
Source: Earth Journalism Network journalist grantee Amrita Gupta with women from the Mahila Umang Producers Company in Ranikhet, Almora Uttarakhand, in August 2018 / Credit: Shriram Raviraj
Key Learnings
Key Learnings: Forty journalists from around the world responded to the survey with their thoughts on the current status of gender equality in environmental journalism. They also shared their own efforts to source women in their stories.
Most respondents indicated that while they believe environmental journalism today includes the voices and viewpoints of women, women are less represented or severely less represented than men.
More than 3 out of 4 respondents indicated that achieving gender balance in terms of the experts and voices sourced in stories is important, with nearly the same number indicating that they actively consider women’s voices and sourcing women in their stories. Several respondents indicated they use the expert database 500 Women Scientists.
62% of respondents said that it was difficult to find women experts to interview for stories. Yet when women did appear in stories, respondents overwhelming said they were represented as experts (82%) or spokespersons (82%) compared to passive actors, such as witnesses or sources of personal opinions (35%). It’s unclear why this disconnect occurred, though it may be because respondents felt their sources had agency, even if speaking about a personal experience.
3 in 4 respondents indicated that they have not received any gender-sensitivity training. Numerous respondents indicated they would appreciate more resources regarding gender balance in their reporting, including both training and access to expert databases.
When women do appear in your stories how are they represented?
Is it more difficult to find women experts to interview for your stories?
Results and feedback from Benchmarking
The benchmarking activity included analysis of 54 of EJN’s stories from their Asia-Pacific and Bay of Bengal projects published or broadcast over the prior two years. Of those stories, approximately 35% of the sources were women. Among the women sources, 52% represented personal experience (someone sharing how the issue at the heart of the story had impacted them), 25% represented a subject matter expert or government official, 16% represented an activist or NGO worker, and the remaining 7% represented an eyewitness.
Source: Participants of the Center for Women's Resources’ digital storytelling training on women and environment visit areas devastated by the 2009 tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) in the Philippines, to speak with women survivors. The training was part of the #HerStoryOurStory project supported by EJN at Internews. Photo credit: CWR.
The stories that had more than two-thirds of women as sources were predominantly written by female reporters, with most focusing on women’s role in farming, agriculture or land stewardship. In most cases, though not always, stories with high numbers of women sources were written by women reporters.
Through this initial benchmarking exercise, EJN encountered a variety of challenges. One key challenge related to the issue of a source’s agency, particularly for personal experience sources. Often the experiences told by women in these stories highlight their expertise in an area. While they did not have the background or credentials to be classified as an “expert”, EJN felt that these women did exhibit a level of agency or authority that the classification ‘personal experience’ didn’t adequately encompass. For this reason, the results of the benchmarking exercise may not accurately reflect the level of authoritative women voices EJN’s content exhibits.
For example, in the article, “Indian tribe revives heirloom seeds for health and climate security,” the role and agency the local women exhibit in adapting their crops to the changing climate is a good example of how women who share their personal experience challenge who we consider to be an expert. The Reverend Lennox Yearwood, President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, has referred to these experts as “Geniuses Outside the Academy.”
In another example from the article “Mekong coffee growers struggle with drought and a warming climate”a woman farmer who serves as a key source could be classified as an expert, but because she is sharing her personal experience with coffee farming, she wasn’t counted as one. Thus, classifying personal experience sources in this way doesn’t allow for an entirely accurate picture of the role women play in particular stories.
Source: EJN reporter, Sahana Ghosh, with a group of women who created a resilience fund post Cyclone Fani in Odisha, India / Credit: Durga Dey of NGO Spandan
Another issue encountered with the chosen benchmarking methodology was the lack of a category for entrepreneurs or business owners. Nor was there a relevant category for women who were village heads (non-state officials) or a non-state authority.
The pilot project built on other gender tracking methods EJN has used, including a regular content analysis, to determine areas for improvement. And while the survey didn’t draw a huge response, it did elicit several important insights, including a link to a study conducted by Zofeen Ebrahim, journalist and editor at the EJN-supported GeoJournalism site, The Third Pole. The study analyzed gender balance in environmental coverage in Pakistan and found that of 278 stories related to the environment, only 22.3% were written by women. There were also few women experts, scientists and politicians quoted, the report noted.
“My findings prove that generally women's voices remain conspicuously missing – from the field, at the policy level and in government's line departments,” Ebrahim said.
“When we come to writing on environment, because fewer women journalists are taking up these issues, we never find out how it affects them,” she added. “Their stories and their travails – or even stories of their resilience in the face of climate change – remain untold.”
Written Feedback from Survey Respondents
“People are keen to read the perspectives of women leaders in the environment and biodiversity sector. Communities respond more if stories have women leaders/groups.”
“[When women’s voices are included] their visibility increases, then others also start approaching them for opinions as experts...and as central figures in stories of impact, their perspective starts to gain credence in policymaking and also relief efforts.”
“For me experts are experts, and I did not experience any difference if I talk to a female or male expert. Every expert has her or his unique perspective. That makes reporting so thrilling.”
“Women are sometimes reluctant to share views and more reluctant to be quoted, especially if the stories are sensitive in nature.”
“This assumes there is a need for “gender balance” in reporting, which there is not. We need to cover affected people and those who are creating change. What difference does it matter what sex they are?”
In connection with this pilot project, in December 2020, EJN decided to conduct further research to determine how journalists in Asia who received grant support and mentorship from EJN included women in their reporting or failed to do so. EJN worked with researchers in four countries – Pakistan, India, Indonesia and the Philippines – to assess how reporters think about gender and what kind of barriers they face when seeking to include women’s voices in their stories, and how social and cultural views of women create challenges to inclusion in reporting.. Read about the findings and recommendations of the report.
In 2022, EJN received additional funding from SIDA to continue the Asia-Pacific project through 2024. Based on insights from research and learnings from the first phase of Asia-Pacific project, in phase 2 (2022-2024), EJN is focusing on strengthening the links between women environment experts and the media, and providing training for women environment experts, environment defenders and Indigenous women on how to best engage with journalists. The project is also developing a directory of women environment experts in various fields for story sourcing.
EJN receives funding from a range of sources. Its first four-year Asia-Pacific project (2019-2021) was supported by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and its Bay of Bengal project received support from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. As referenced above, in 2022, SIDA awarded EJN further support for a second phase of the Asia-Pacific project through 2024.
