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According to research published by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), women's concerns do not come up as much as they should either in the election campaigning or in the media coverage of the run up to elections later this month.

Researcher Tanya Owen said that only 0.6% of news coverage was related to gender- and women-related topics. She said the issues generally discussed in the media had important repurcussions for women, but it was mostly men who were commenting on these issues, and the women's voice was almost absent in the debate.

All South African parties agree that women's issues and equality are important, but, Tanya Owen says, few of them have policies or action plans to back this up.