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Research conducted by Media Tenor shows, that the days around 9th of August are basically the only time during the entire calendar year, when media devote noticeable amount of attention to the female part of the South African society and also allocate more media space dedicated to individual female personas. The findings of the analysis show that during the period January 2004 - July 2006 only 16.6% of all individuals, mentioned in leading South African media were women. This rate was the lowest last year, when women got quoted in only 14.6% of all the cases (17.7% in 2004), while the first 7 months of 2006 show some improvement of the trend, with the share increasing to 19.8%.

But what appears as an optimistic revelation at first, gets a bitter aftertaste as soon as we have a closer look at the causes for such improvement - the coverage on female individuals increased mainly due to the rise of media reporting on crime with women involved, particularly murder, rape and related court cases. The share of coverage on individual women with reference to crime was the highest in April, when more than 27% of all reporting of leading SA media mentioning women was referring to this issue. One of the main contributors to this increase was definitely the high publicity of the 'Zuma case', which basically 'hijacked' the media attention for several months and was coming to its closure just at the end of April.

Business on the other hand in the media remains the domain of men: from all the coverage on female individuals during 2006 only 6% was related to business issues. Politics on the other hand features quite high on the scale of issues linked to women, which is, due to generally high volume of reporting on the government - with its high proportion of women ministers and a female deputy president - not particularly surprising.

The court case involving the former deputy president did however not contribute only to the rise of coverage on crime involving women, but was also one of the main reasons for Jacob Zuma being listed as the second most often mentioned person in leading South African media during 2006, following SA president Thabo Mbeki and ahead of USA president George W. Bush. SA Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo - Ngcuka, who features as the 5th, is on the other hand the only women amongst top 10. Helen Zille, the Cape Town mayor, is listed as 11th, health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as 13th and education minister Naledi Pandor as 18th. In total, there are only 8 women amongst top 30 most often mentioned individuals in leading South African media, all of them politicians.

Yet, with 17% of all mentions in average (January 2004 - July 2006) women as individuals are still treated by the media much better than when being reported on as a group. Women as a part of SA society in 2004 for example received only 833 articles during the entire year, with 28% of them being published in August. The year after the total number of reports dropped to 699 (23% of them in August), while during the first seven months of 2006 women as part of the society received 432 articles in leading SA media.

But not only women, some other groups of South African population are also pushed on the edge of media scope: children and youth in general as part of the society for example during the first seven months of 2006 received only 126 articles in average per month (in total 880), while senior citizens with 21 and disabled people with 12 reports in average per month almost disappeared from South African 'media radar'. Again, media devote considerable coverage during June around Youth Day, and with some coverage in December/January around matric results, but mostly silent for the rest of the year. .

In times, when gender equality has already seen significant improvements in certain fields of life (South Africa for example ranks as one of the top countries in the world in terms of the share of women in the parliament and the government), media for women thus remain largely inaccessible. And if true, that media create our reality and define what in the eyes of the public exists and what not, than the South African watchdogs still have about 4 months time to prove, that South African society in 2006 consisted of something more than only 17% of women, who most of their time spent in the court rooms, being celebrities, received awards or were involved in accidents.

For this report 595 202 articles during January 2004 - July 2006 period from the following media have been analysed: Rapport, Sake Rapport, Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, Business Times, Sunday Independent, City Press, Financial Mail, Finweek, Sunday Sun, Sunday World, Business Report, Beeld, The Citizen, Business Day, Daily Sun, Sowetan, The Star, Pretoria News, Sake, SABC TV News and E-TV News.