regional average for women is 11 percent, compared to two percent for men. • Women in certain occupational categories are virtually silent: The only occupational categories in which female views dominated were beauty contestants, sex workers and home- makers. Male voices predominated even in agriculture, where women perform most of the work. • Women politicians are not heard relative to even their strengths in parliament: Women constitute an average of 18 percent of the members of parliament in the region. Yet women constituted only eight percent of the sources in the politician category. Countries that have the highest representation of women in parliament- South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania- also had some of the lowest proportions of women politicians being accessed as news sources. South Africa, for example, has 31 percent women in parliament and a similar proportion in cabinet. Yet women constituted only 8 percent of the politicians quoted in the media monitored. • Gender equality is hardly considered newsworthy: About a quarter of all the over 25 000 news items monitored related to politics and economics, and close to twenty percent were on sports. Gender specific news items accounted for a mere two percent of the total, and about half of these were on gender violence. • The only topic on which women’s voices outnumber men’s is on gender equality: Women’s voices predominated only in the gender equality topic code. There were more male than female voices even in the topic code on gender violence. • Men’s voices dominate in all the hard news categories: Women constituted less than ten percent of news sources in the economics, politics and sport categories. • The highest level of representation of women in the media is as TV presenters: As in the global study, at 45 percent, women television presenters constitute the highest proportion of women media practitioners in the region. Unlike the global findings, women in Southern Africa do not constitute the majority of this category. • But they have to be young! The heaviest concentration of female electronic media practitioners is in the 20-34 year bracket. This tapers off much more dramatically for women than for men in the 35-49 year category, and for both men 45