This introductory chapter by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström provides the rationale behind the project Comparing gender and media equality across the globe and clarifies the normative theories supporting the strive for gender equality in and through the news media. The project examines equality in news media content as well as in news media organisations and conducts empirical analyses of both the causes and consequences of media and gender equality in countries across the globe. Furthermore, a unique dataset is developed within the project; The GEM dataset pools together existing comparative data on gender equality in the media, making them available for use by the global research community.  The chapter also highlights previous research, discusses the key methodological considerations, explains the value of the various datasets used in the project, and provides an overview on the global commitments to improve gender equality in the media, as a context for this study. Finally, we give an overview of the whole book and a summary of the main insights from the project:

• Gender equality in the news media is lacking in most countries in the world. 
• Gender equality in the news media reflects that journalism is a semi-autonomous field. 
• The news media misrepresents reality when it comes the actual progress of gender equality in the world.  
• The news media logic operates as a global homogeniser. 
• Progress is both fast and slow. 
• The gender gap in the news content is most likely greater than the gender gap in news media access and use.
• Monitoring instruments and reliable data are needed to know if progress occurs.
• Gender data on the media are still lacking.