Despite the global prevalence of sexual misconduct and violence against women and girls, misogyny-related media coverage on the issue is virtually nonexistent, according to a report by AKAS, a London-based consulting and research firm.
In an analysis of 1.14 billion global news stories, the authors found that misogyny-related news coverage averaged just 1.6 percent of total online news output from 2017 to 2025, hitting a decade low of 1.3 percent in 2025. Among stories that are related to misogyny, men are more likely to cover the topic, with 1.5 men quoted for every one woman. At the country level, the authors found a weak relationship between the actual high prevalence of violence against women in a country and the lack of news coverage the issue receives.
Among the top 50 English-speaking global news providers around the world, just five news or aggregator websites account for over half of the stories centered on women’s misogyny-related disadvantages in society. Furthermore, stories that are linked to misogyny issues often focus on individual incidents rather than the prevalent nature of the problem.
The authors also examined nearly one million articles related to Jeffrey Epstein, finding that many focused on power networks and money instead of women’s suffering related to the Epstein network’s decades-long abuse of girls and women. The terms “systemic,” “sexism,” “patriarchy,” and “misogyny” appeared in less than 1 percent of Epstein-related articles, while the term “structural” appeared in 0.5 percent, and the phrase “violence against women” was present in only 0.1 percent.
“Newsrooms and journalists globally hold a precious key,” the authors write. “The key to the perspectives of hundreds of millions of women and girls who are suffering and whose stories demand to be told with sensitivity and skill to move policymakers. So that these policymakers then change women’s realities through new laws, initiatives and programmes that both protect women and liberate society from damaging social norms.”