This brief updates the Women Journalists’ Safety: Albania Report 2024 and assesses developments in 2025, with reference to key dynamics observed in early 2026. The analysis combines systematic monitoring of incidents recorded in the SafeJournalists Network database with institutional data obtained through freedom-of-information requests, survey findings and qualitative evidence to identify patterns rather than individual cases. Building on the 2024 baseline, it integrates four in-depth interviews and insights from discussions at a national conference on women in media to assess how risks affecting women journalists and media workers are expressed, addressed and experienced in practice.
The 2024 analysis established that risks affecting women journalists in Albania are systemic rather than episodic, rooted in structural conditions within the media and institutional environment. It showed that gender-based attacks are primarily expressed through online harassment and reputational pressure, producing a sustained chilling effect rather than immediate physical danger, while reporting remains low and institutional follow-up limited. Crucially, the gender lens exposes underlying vulnerabilities of the media ecosystem itself, with working conditions as a central driver of vulnerability and internal newsroom dynamics as a key constraint, including editorial pressure, ownership influence and gender inequality in decisionmaking, which together contribute to self-censorship and limit women’s participation in public-interest journalism.