The things we see in the media and their missing counterparts teach us who matters.
Media isn’t just a mirror; it’s a lens that shapes how we see the world and ourselves. Two key ideas in media studies, agenda-setting and framing, reveal how the media subtly control what we see, and how.
Agenda-setting, as the name suggests, describes how media gatekeepers decide which stories we pay attention to. Through framing, on the other hand, they select how those stories are told—the words, the visuals, the angles that shape our understanding, and the lens through which stories are told to favour their cause.
Together, agenda-setting and framing guide not just what we think about, but how we think about what we think about.
Viewed through a feminist lens, these concepts expose a long-standing pattern of how women’s visibility is often limited, their experiences silenced, and patriarchal norms reinforced.
The Politics of Mattering: Who Counts?
Despite strides in education, leadership, and activism, research shows that women make up only about a quarter of all people featured as news sources and subjects in global news. Even when they appear as the subjects of news stories, women’s stories are underreported and often underrepresented. To put it matter-of-factly, female sources and subjects are usually underquoted and mostly relegated to the sidelines.
Through the consistent sidelining of issues like violence against women, equal pay, reproductive rights, and representation, the media portrays that these issues—and the affected women in them—are secondary. Thus, women’s issues are treated as peripheral, not central, skewing public perception of who and what matters, over time.
Who Shapes the Story?
Even when women make headlines, framing often undermines their authority and agency. A male politician is a politician: a strategist, a leader, a thinker. His female counterpart? Usually described as a female politician, and might be labelled “ambitious,” “emotional,” or “controversial”. Andher wardrobe, looks, and even her personal life may take the spotlight away from her policies, ideas, or achievements.
Although framing doesn’t always stem from malice, it relegates women to the background by prioritising appearance or relationships over intellect and agency. Through framing, the media dilutes women’s power, rendering them decorative rather than decisive. They may be present in the room, yet only as a fly on the wall.
The Quiet Erasure: Lost in Plain Sight
Agenda-setting and framing don’t just reflect bias. They create it.
When women’s stories are underrepresented or misrepresented, their absence becomes normalised. Over time, society internalises it and codes leadership and authority as a masculine figure who wears navy suits and carries briefcases. The effect of this is that innovation, expertise, and decision-making are imagined as male.
And when women’s issues vanish from headlines, they often disappear from policy debates. Invisibility thus becomes self-sustaining, quietly erasing women from both the story and the systems that govern it.
Reclaiming the Narrative
Research reminds us that the problem isn’t just representation—it’s structure. Newsrooms, like most institutions, are built on gendered hierarchies. Because the media gatekeeping landscape is predominantly male-dominated, editorial choices, source selection, and credibility are shaped by longstanding biases.
True change requires women to reimagine the frameworks themselves, rather than allowing themselves to be inserted into existing ones. This temporary fix has yet to address the deeper issues or create a lasting impact. The burden thus lies on female gatekeepers to decide what’s newsworthy, what’s credible, who gets quoted, and who owns the voice in narration.
To see true progress, decision-makers must look at intersectionality with the understanding that women are not a single story. Women of diverse religious, educational, and social backgrounds, women with disabilities, and women from marginalised backgrounds must be centered, not as special topics, but as vital perspectives that shape society.
