Abstract
Aotearoa New Zealand’s progress towards gender equality in the news media continues to plateau. In 2025, our news was dominated by Crime & Violence, Economy, and Social & Legal topics, crowding out the Political & Government stories where New Zealand women have traditionally fared better as subjects and sources. Women comprised just 32% of news subjects in New Zealand’s legacy media and 35% in online news, which was slightly down from 2020 results though still above the global average of 26% and 29% respectively.
Similarly, 2025 brought no notable progress towards gender equality among New Zealand news workers. Instead, there was a sizeable decline in the percentage of women print reporters (from 59% in 2020 to 42% in 2025) though an increase (from 55% to 60%) in the proportion of women reporting for online outlets. The latter finding is consistent with global data showing online news is generally more gender equal in terms of both reporters and news subjects.
For the first time, Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2025 captured more granular data on gender-based violence and sports reporting in the news. Less than 2% of the world’s stories were about gender-based violence on monitoring day, with NZ performing better at 4%. Globally, women comprised just 15% of subjects in sports news and 17% of sports reporters, with NZ figures of 18% subjects and 0% reporters on monitoring day.
The Global Media Monitoring Project is carried out by World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) in partnership with UN Women, UNESCO, and the Global Alliance on Gender and Media (GAMAG). Susan Fountaine (Massey University) and Katheryn Margaret Pascoe (University of Otago) are the co-national coordinators of the Aotearoa New Zealand branch of the GMMP project.