Initiative

72% of all media reports in Switzerland are about men. According to the Global Media Monitoring Project 2016, the global figure is as high as 82%. The goal of EqualVoice is to increase the visibility of women in the media and therefore close the gender visibility gap, create more female role models and give women and men an equal voice.

EqualVoice advocates equal visibility of women and men in the media. We need more genuine and diverse role models so that the media represents reality.

Instead of promoting quotas, Ringier is using its journalistic and technological influence to advocate gender equality. At the heart of the initiative is the EqualVoice Factor. Using a semantic algorithm developed in-house, it measures the visibility of women in articles. The EqualVoice Factor has now been developed further and can analyse text, images and videos. It is an extremely innovative step towards gender equality!

The EqualVoice Factor comprises two objective indicators: the «Teaser Score», which evaluates the visibility of women in images, headlines and titles, and the «Body Score», which shows how often women and men are mentioned in an article’s text. Scientifically documented confirmation was provided in the validation of the EqualVoice Factor measurement method by ETH Zurich.

We are not just interested in how often women feature in our publications, but also in how they are depicted. Using the EqualVoice-Frame, we’re able to analyse the context in which women are represented so we can break down typical stereotypes. With EqualVoice-Fact, the typical stereotyping of men is also evaluated.

The EqualVoice Female Experts List is a research tool for journalists that gives them simplified access to verified female experts in various areas of specialism. EqualVoice also runs regular internal editorial workshops so it can collaborate with Ringier editorial teams on developing measures to incorporate gender equality into everyday journalism.