Portrayal of Gender in Select Nigerian Mainstream Newspapers

Abstract

The researchers examined the sexualisation of contents in select Nigerian newspapers. A total of three newspapers were studied. They are Vanguard, The Punch and The Guardian. The duration of the study was six months (January 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2021). The purpose of the study was to find out how the newspapers portrayed men and women in their contents. Content analysis was used for the study with the code sheet as the instrument for data collection. Simple percentages were used to answer the research questions. The result showed that men featured more in political, economic, education, health and sports news. At the same time, women featured more in entertainment and domestic news. Women were less reported in politics, sports and economics. Also, the tone of the representation of women was largely negative, while that of men was positive. Thus, it was recommended, among other, that print media should break away from the stereotypical way of portraying men and women in their reports.