A recent study from the Women's Media Center found that male journalists disproportionately report and commentate on reproductive rights topics in print media. According to Mic staff writer Julie Zeilinger, the study found that in 2014 and 2015, "[m]ale journalists wrote 52% of the articles focused on reproductive issues," and that “41% of all quotes in these pieces were attributed to men”:

The study, which examined 1,385 news and opinion pieces about reproductive rights published between Aug. 1, 2014, and July 31, 2015, in 12 high-circulation sources, found that some publications accounted for this issue better than others. Male and female journalists reported on the topic in near equal numbers for the New York Daily News, and women did so more often than men for USA Today and the Washington Post. But many others, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, skewed male, and men filed reproductive rights-related stories nearly twice as often as women at the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

In comments to Mic, the president of the Women's Media Center, Julie Burton,explained the implications of the study. “Reproductive health, rights, and choices are fundamental and inescapable parts of women's lives,” said Burton, "[y]et our study shows that women are often left out of the discussion. Women -- who are 51 percent of the population -- only wrote slightly more than a third."

The consequences of this exclusion are even higher in an election year. According to Burton, in spite of the lack of attention given to reproductive rights in any of the Democratic debates, the issue “will almost surely be an issue in November's presidential election...[y]et our study shows that in articles about elections and reproductive issues, men's voices prevail.”

The research findings echoed a study from 2012 which examined 35 national publications and found that in election stories about birth control, men garnered 75 percent of quotes, and 67 percent of quotes about stories involving Planned Parenthood during part of the 2012 presidential election cycle. Similarly an earlier report from the Women's Media Center found in a study of the 10 largest newspapers, evening news broadcasts, two wire services, and four internet news sites, that 65 percent of the political reporting was done by men.

Media Matters' own studies show that women are underrepresented in broadcast and cable news. On the Sunday morning news shows from the broadcast networks and CNN throughout 2014, men made up between 73 and 77 percent of all guests, and overwhelmingly received solo interviews. These statistics have largely been unchanged at least as far back as 2008. In January 2014, two dozen women leaders and organizations urged the six network and cable news heads in a letter to address this lack of diversity on the Sunday morning news shows.