The Global Media Monitoring Project is the largest and longest study on the representation of women in the world’s media. It is also the largest advocacy initiative in the world on changing the representation of women in the media. It is unique in involving participants ranging from grassroots community organizations to university students and researchers to media practitioners, all of whom participate on a voluntary basis.
The idea for a one-day study of the representation and portrayal of women and men in the world’s news media was first conceived at the international conference ‘Women Empowering Communication’ in Bangkok in 1994. With the support of WACC and others, MediaWatch, a Canadian NGO and one of the pioneers in ‘media watching’, took up the challenge of coordinating this ground breaking initiative – the Global Media Monitoring Project – the aims of which were:
- To map the representation and portrayal of women in the world’s news media
- To develop a grassroots research instrument
- To build solidarity among gender and communication groups worldwide
- To create media awareness
- To develop media monitoring skills on an international level.