There is an increasing pressure on media to step up and take measures to ensure women’s access to the media industry and to combat gender stereotypes. The UN member states committed to this already in 1995 in the Beijing Platform for Action, but how gender equal is the media? The Nordic region is well known for having gender equality as a hallmark in society. In the media sector, however, the male dominance persists in many areas, both in the industry itself and in the output. In 2014, Nordicom – a knowledge centre for media and communication research – initiated the project Nordic Gender & Media Forum, a platform for discussion on gender equality in media. The platform is compiling sexdisaggregated statistics for the Nordic media industry (film, journalism, advertising and computer games). These data serve as a knowledge base for discussion on good gender practices in the media in the Nordic countries.

The full compilation of data can be found at the Nordicom website, Media trends.Nordic Gender & Media Forum is also about collecting good practices and broadening the meaning of gender equality by connecting with other Nordic projects on gender, such as Queering Sapmi and the work on combatting sexualised hate speech conducted by a Norwegian resource centre for men, Reform. About 30 examples of good practices from the Nordic region are included in an anthology (December 2014).