Like most disparities that favor women, this one is also ignored by feminists.

Gender Missing Persons Coverage Gap

The study by Taylor et al. (2013) reveals a distortion in print media reporting of child abduction incidents, highlighting a focus on female and younger victims. Female victims receive disproportionate attention, with 76.5% of newspaper articles focusing on them, despite an equal gender distribution in actual abduction cases. This pattern is supported by a later study by Sommers (2016), who identifies an overrepresentation of women, in media coverage of missing persons. Sommers' analysis emphasizes the consistent overrepresentation of women at both individual and article levels across various news sources.

Systematic analysis has revealed that the media, specifically the print media, tends to report a distorted image of abduction incidents to the public… In addition, evidence demonstrates that the print media has a tendency to report more on certain demographics of victims, namely gender and age. More specifically, as illustrated by the cases above, female victims are more likely to be reported on than male victims, and younger victims are more likely to be reported on than older victims. To illustrate, Fu, Moellers, Moscowitz, Duvall, and Tan (2009) discovered that 76.5% of newspaper articles on child abduction incidents focused on female victims while only 18% of stories focused on male victims (N= 212 newspaper articles). However, according to the 1999 Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2), there is almost an equal distribution of male and female victims, with 46% of all abduction victims being male and 54% females. (pg.152)

Consistent with Fu et al.’s (2009) claim that female victims tend to receive disproportionate amounts of media attention, the results from the current study revealed that significantly more words were dedicated to female abduction incidents compared to male abduction incidents in the sample of newspaper articles. (pg.161)

In short, the current study illustrated that certain types of abduction victims do receive more media attention than others. More specifically, the print media dedicated more words to female victims compared to male victims (pg.162)

https://i.imgur.com/ltNIhpc.jpg

Taylor, J., Boisvert, D., Sims, B., & Garver, C. (2013). An examination of gender and age in print media accounts of child abductions. Criminal Justice Studies (Abingdon, England), 26(2), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/1478601x.2012.724683

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Table 3 contains the gender breakdown by individual across both the media subset and the FBI population.

Table 3. Gender Composition of Individuals in Media and FBI Populations

Gender Media FBI
Female 56.11% (248) 48.48% (40,783)
Male 43.89% (194) 51.52% (43,348)

With respect to gender, Table 3 demonstrates that women are overrepresented in the media population when compared to the women in the FBI Active Missing Person File (z = -3.20, p < .001). Predictably, men see a reciprocal underrepresentation (z = 3.20, p < .001). (pg.299)

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Table 8 shows that women are considerably overrepresented as the subjects of articles.

Table 8. Gender of Article Subjects as Compared to FBI Population

Gender Media FBI
Female 73.36% (1,217) 48.48% (40,783)
Male 26.64% (442) 51.52% (43,348)

The gender differences expand when looking at coverage intensity, as women represent 73.36% of the population, up from 56.11% in the Stage I analysis. The difference between the article subject composition and the FBI data composition is highly significant (z = -20.08, p < .001). (pg.303)

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The table demonstrates that each of the five sources published a disproportionately high number of articles about women. With the exception of The Chicago Tribune, each source sees a sizeable increase of at least sixteen percentage points in female representation in articles… White women alone account for almost half of all articles in the data. That figure is likely substantially higher than the number of white women in the overall missing person population. (pg.304)

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The gender results of Stage I are also in line with MWWS. Women are overrepresented on the individual level, with four of the five sources overrepresenting female missing persons. (pg.309)

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With respect to gender in Stage II, women, like non-blacks, see a spike in their proportion of articles. The fact that women are consistently overrepresented on both the individual and article levels and across all sources provides compelling evidence in support of the gender component of MWWS. (pg.310)

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White women specifically seem more likely to receive any news coverage and benefit from higher coverage intensity, although the latter findings are more definitive. In all, the findings provide a basis for an empirical foundation of MWWS. (pg.311)

https://i.imgur.com/Vl1wihR.jpg

Sommers, Z. (2016). Missing White Woman Syndrome: An empirical analysis of race and gender disparities in online news coverage of missing persons. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 106(2), 4. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol106/iss2/4