Tempo Joins BBC's 50:50 to Increase Women Representation in News

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Tempo.co is to become part of a rapidly expanding global network of media organisations that have joined the BBC’s 50:50 Project - an initiative that aims to inspire and assist journalists and producers to improve women representation in the output.

"We believe in the importance of more women representation in mainstream media, and this is the first step for us to achieve it," said Tempo.co's Editor-in-Chief Wahyu Dhyatmika on August 1, 2019.

For some time, Wahyu explained, Tempo's newsroom has realised the lack of women voices in the news. Some suggestions were raised but none really change the game. “Until we heard about the success of BBC with its 50:50 Project,” said Wahyu.  "If BBC with its huge workforce and long tradition can change and achieve this goal, then we can also do the same.”

For the BBC, the 50:50 Project is the biggest collective action on improving women contributors in their contents that there has ever been. It started on one news programme in January 2017 and now includes over 500 BBC teams across news, sport, science, children’s, music and more.

In May 2019, the BBC published its data for April which shows how monitoring the number of men and women in their content is helping to improve female representation in the media content. The statistics showed that in April, 74 percent of teams implementing the project for 12 months or more reached 50 percent of women contributors. That’s compared to 27 percent of teams who are managing it when they started.

The 50:50 Project has now expanded beyond the BBC, with more than 35 companies from Australia, the US, South Africa and Europe applying the methodology within their own organisations. Among those signed-up are the Financial Times, Radio Free Asia and ABC News Australia.

“By creating a global 50:50 network, we are aiming to deliver a significant and lasting change across the media,” explained 50:50 Project’s External Partners Manager Sarah Holmes. “We at the 50:50 Project are pleased to include Tempo in our growing network of partner organisations. We look forward to supporting them in their aspiration to increase female representation in their content.”

With BBC's support, Wahyu said, Tempo.co aims to increase women representation in the content reaching 50:50 next year.

TEMPO.CO