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South China Morning Post joins UN Women’s Media Compact to advance gender equality through journalism

  • It’s the first Hong Kong-based outlet to join alliance aimed at expanding focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues
  • While women make up about half of the world’s population, they remain sorely under-represented in the news

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The United Nations headquarters in New York. The UN Women’s Media Compact has more than 80 partners. Photo: Bloomberg
Melissa Zhu
As the world marks International Women’s Day on Tuesday, the South China Morning Post joined the UN Women’s Media Compact – a global alliance of media outlets committed to scaling up the focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues.
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Launched in 2016, the compact has over 80 media partners including the BBC, Politico and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Post is the first Hong Kong-based news outlet to join the alliance.

“We are delighted the Post is partnering with UN Women to champion gender equality and women’s empowerment as part of their Media Compact,” Post chief executive Gary Liu said.

“UN Women has been a great advocate for global rights and we are excited to contribute news content that raises awareness of the continued struggles with gender inequality in Asia and highlights the importance of ongoing advocacy.”

Women make up about half of the world’s population, but still remain sorely under-represented in the news. The Global Media Monitoring Project, which tracks gender equality in the news, found in a 2020 global survey that women accounted for 25 per cent of news subjects and sources in all forms of media – only one percentage point higher than the 24 per cent in 2015.
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“Women represent only one out of four of the persons heard, read about or seen in the news,” said Sarah Knibbs, officer-in-charge for UN Women Asia and the Pacific. “Media outlets have the power to change that by scaling up their focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues.”

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