In this Reuters Institute factsheet we analyse the gender breakdown of top editors in a strategic sample of 240 major online and offline news outlets in 12 different markets across five continents.
Looking at a sample of ten top online news outlets and ten top offline news outlets in each of these 12 markets, we find:
- Only 24% of the 174 top editors across the 240 brands covered are women, despite the fact that, on average, 40% of journalists in the 12 markets are women. In 2023, this figure was 22% across the same markets.
- Among the 33 new top editors appointed across brands covered this year and last, 24% are women.
- In all 12 markets, the majority of top editors are men, including in countries where women outnumber men among working journalists.
- The percentage of women in top editorial positions varies significantly from market to market, from 0% in Japan to 43% in the US.
- When we compare the percentage of women working in journalism with the percentage of women in top editorial positions, we find a weak positive correlation. Despite this, in 11 out of 12 markets there are lower percentages of women in top editorial roles than women working as journalists.
- Looking more broadly at gender equality in society and the percentage of women in top editorial positions, this year we find no correlation. It continues to be the case that many countries that score well on the United Nations Gender Inequality Index (UN GII) have relatively few women among the top editors.
- There is notable variation in the percentage of online news users in each market who say they get news from one or more major outlets with a woman as the top editor (whether offline or online). This ranges from, at the high end, 76% in Finland to, at the low end, 17% in Mexico and, given the absence of women top editors in our sample, 0% in Japan.
- Looking across the ten markets where we have collected data for five years, the percentage of women among the top editors has changed from 23% in 2020 to 25% in 2024. A linear projection suggests that, at this pace of change, there could be gender parity in top editorial positions by the year 2074.
- But the change is not consistent across our sample – while the percentage of women in top editorial positions has increased relative to 2020 in six countries, it is the same in Mexico (6%) and Japan (0%), and it has decreased in Germany (from 27% to 25%) and South Africa (47% to 29%).