Did you know that the majority of Brazil’s population is black, but its longest-running women’s magazine has only 5.3% of covers featuring black women?

During the month of February, Dr. Gabrielle Bittelbrun and Dr. Ivana Ebel participated in an academic tour of the UK, visiting Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts on February 19. Within their talks, they presented the stark findings of their analysis of women’s magazine covers in both Brazil and the UK.

Describing their talks as feminist, the two researchers hope to invoke change within the magazine industry, and shine a light upon an overlooked aspect of women’s magazines.

Many attendees were students of subjects related to the magazine sector, such as journalism or publishing. This aspect of the talk was incredibly important for the two researchers, who are now expanding upon their research and looking into solutions for the problems they have identified.

“We expect that the students in the audience could be a little more conscious of [issues] related to women’s magazines,” said Dr. Gabrielle Bittelbrun, who travelled from Brazil to present the talks. “We also hope that we can find, together, ways to have more representative media. We wanted to hear from the students about what could be done to have a more diverse perspective.”

Watch the video below for a better understanding of the event: