Spanish News To Enforce Equal Talk Time For Men And Women
This post is republished with permission from Remix News
A Spanish law requiring men and women to have equal speaking time on news programs will now be monitored by the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) to ensure compliance.
The gender law, promoted by the Socialist party, was first put forward by the department of Nadia Calviño, the first vice president of the government and minister of economic affairs and digital transformation. She said in February 2022 that she would no longer participate in debates where she was the only woman, but then went a step further and decided to spearhead a law requiring the presence of women.
Calviño’s law was approved by Congress in May 2022 and the fines for violating the law can be extremely high. In fact, “the broadcasting of content that clearly promotes situations of inequality for women” was defined in the 2022 law as a “very serious offense.” TV networks can be punished with fines between €60,000 and €1.5 million, depending on the offense and the income of the networks.
In practice, it remains to be seen exactly how this law will be determined and enforced.
Now, the CMAC is going to monitor Spanish news to ensure women and men are speaking equally. To do this, it will monitor 250 hours of broadcasting per year to examine the presence of females on a dozen networks, including both public networks RTVE and 24h, as well as private networks, according to El Mundo.
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According to the law, newscasts must convey “an equal and non-discriminatory image” of women and men. They are not permitted to promote “directly or indirectly, situations of discrimination based on sex.”
The CMAC will review between 800 and 1,000 15-minute clips, which will be reviewed by a consulting firm that has been provided €121,000 for both 2025 and 2026.
“A worksheet will have to reflect the speaking time of each of the actors participating in the news, following the criteria established by the CNMC, and paying special attention to the representation of women in these spaces,” the contract documents state.
The CMAC is headed by Cani Fernández, who is close to Calviño.
As El Mundo reports, women are increasingly seen on news networks, but there is currently no official data on how much men and women are speaking.
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