This chapter aims to compare the gender equality policies of public service media on the one hand and privately-owned media on the other hand, in a Portuguese context, with gendered professional practice, inquiring into the extent to which good practices are implemented within the remit of either model. By gendered practice, we mean both the hierarchical decision-making position of women within Portuguese media organisations as well as gender distribution by TV genre, with particular focus on female representation in fact-based and factual programmes. Gendered equality policies will be scrutinised through the lens of media practice, so as to unmask the contexts that condition the applicability of equal opportunity codes. Interviews with female journalists who specialise in factual content and who rank high in media hierarchy will be carried out so as to better comprehend the common experiences shared by women in the way they relate to their profession and to the characteristics of the organisation that they work for. The invisibility of gender in legal and deontological codes regulative of journalistic activity will be reflected on as part of the legacy of the 25 April Revolution, whose most cherished value, that of Freedom of Expression, often equates gender-specific regulation with censorship.

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