Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney analysed 15 of Australia’s most influential news sites for the gender representations across various indicators, including the gender of the journalist/s, sources cited, photographers, and subject/s of the photos. They also examined whether a journalist's gender had an impact on the gender of the sources they quoted in news stories.

The researchers selected the top five stories on each site from their position on the homepage on four consecutive Thursdays in October 2018 between 12 noon and 2pm. In February 2019, they analysed the top five opinion pieces on each site across Tuesday to Saturday in one week between 12 noon and 2pm.

Overall, women account for 34% of the direct sources quotes, and 24% of indirect sources.

Interestingly, this poor representation of female voices across news media cannot be directly blamed on a lack of women working in news gathering. Across all the online news sites analysed, the overall representation of male to female journalists were fairly equal (52% men vs 48% women).