Gendering Media Policy Research and Communication Governance

The nexus between media gender inequalities and media policy has not been a central concern for researchers, practitioners, media organisations and decision-making bodies over the past years. Yet normative frameworks, national media policies and measures adopted at the level of media organisations are crucial to define principles and goals, reflect normative orientations and develop mechanisms to assess progress and change in response to persisting and plural forms of gender inequality in and through the media. In this contribution, I discuss why and how gendering media policy research can be seen as both a way to enrich our understanding of media operations in knowledge societies, and a means to engage scholarly knowledge with multi-dimensional structures of communication governance that are all too often gender-blind. Starting from a short review of international normative references and of existing scholarly contributions, I discuss how communication governance from a gender perspective can be conceptualised; and I propose the adoption of a media gender equality regimes approach to foster the critical knowledge that is needed to make media and communication governing arrangements gender-responsive.