Coimbra, Portugal, Feb. 24, 2026 (Lusa) - The Lusa news agency, which for the first time participated in an international study on gender disparities in news content, reports "patterns of inequality even more pronounced than the national average".
National data from the latest edition of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), carried out by the non-governmental organisation World Association for Christian Communication and which is the largest and oldest study on gender disparities in the media, reveal that only 12% of the subjects in the Lusa news items collected were women, half the average value of the other media outlets analysed (press, radio, television and digital), which is already below the global average (26%).
The GMMP conducted its latest monitoring on 6 May 2025, collecting 30,049 news items from 94 countries, involving 58,563 people and produced by 26,708 professionals. In Portugal, 319 news items were analysed.
News agencies were never part of the analysis, but at Lusa's suggestion, the national coordination of the study, carried out by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, agreed to include the only Portuguese agency in its monitoring.
Rita Basílio Simões, university professor and national coordinator of the GMMP, acknowledges that the sample of news items collected was small, 14 articles, a figure set for digital media news (which the national coordination felt was best suited to the agency), but it is still valid "due to its exploratory nature".
In addition, the day's agenda focused on the topics of economics, crime and violence, and politics and government, which traditionally have a lower presence of women, and the date chosen for monitoring was marked by events that tended to be more male-oriented, such as the campaign for the legislative elections in Germany, the potential candidates for the papal succession, and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
Even so, the "experimental inclusion" of Lusa news revealed "a particularly weak female presence in agency news," concludes the national report.
The experiment also made it possible to test the applicability of the indicators to agency news: "It became clear that it is applicable, but that does not mean that we cannot introduce adaptations, which may precisely focus on the periods of time when the collection is made, making it, on the one hand, more dispersed throughout the day and not concentrated at a single moment, and, on the other hand, also increasing the “corpus” of analysis, so that the news items analysed can more accurately reflect the agency's production on a single day."
Focusing the analysis on the people heard as expert sources (and not just subjects of the news), “female invisibility” is equally reinforced in the 14 Lusa articles collected.
Political news proves to be the "most masculinised", with 86% of men present: "The political sources favoured by Lusa are overwhelmingly male, even in an area marked by female presence, conditioning the agenda, the perspectives presented and the very perception of power in the public sphere."
The report highlights "the fact that the national news agency, which serves as the primary source for a wide range of media outlets, reproduces and amplifies gender bias," which should lead to "critical questioning of the editorial practices of a structurally influential newsroom," Rita Basílio Simões urges, hoping that Lusa will be open to more in-depth analysis in the future.
The national coordination of the GMMP also noted that the experimental analysis "is particularly relevant" because Lusa has "an organisational culture that is generally sensitive" to gender equality, with "extremely valuable internal tools that aim to say that the agency contributes to a society with fewer imbalances", namely an equality commission and an equality action plan.
Considering the experience, which involved four Lusa journalists, to be "very fruitful", Basílio Simões says that "it makes perfect sense for [the agency, as a media outlet] to become part of the GMMP's monitoring operations".
The results of the latest edition will be presented today at 2:30 p.m. at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, at the event "Gender in focus: portrait of the Portuguese media by GMMP 2025," of which Lusa is a partner.
The data will also be discussed on Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon, with the conference "Gender and Media: evidence and trends 30 years later," organised by the Regulatory Authority for the Media (ERC) and the Portuguese GMMP team.
The Portuguese operation for GMMP 2025 brought together teachers, researchers and students from the University of Coimbra, as well as other national academic and scientific institutions, most of whom are members of the Working Group on Gender and Sexualities of the Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences, one of the partners in the initiative, which had the institutional support of the ERC.
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