Top editorial leadership matters both in terms of how journalism is practised and how it appears in society. Therefore, it is important to track who top editors are and document the extent to which they represent the wider public in all its difference and diversity.
One aspect of that is the gender of top editors. As Kassova (2022) writes in the latest of a series of important reports supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ‘women are significantly underrepresented in editorial leadership roles and news coverage and their voices remain muted in a global news industry still dominated by men’.