News-wise, women are often ignored

They're featured in stories far less than men

By Heidi Dawley

Feb 21, 2006

We hear so often how much women have advanced in the past three decades, and it's all true. Years ago women who graduated from college often chose between teaching school or becoming an airline stewardess. Or they got married. Nowadays the're in medicine, law, business and politics.

Yet, curiously, women are still largely absent in one area of public life. It's in the media. Women's opinions, their expertise, their views on matters of public weight, are not sought out nearly as often as those of men. And this is so across the globe.

In fact, a recent global study found that only 21 percent of those in the news or interviewed on the news are actually women. Further, that number was up only slightly from 10 years ago, according a report published by the World Association for Christian Communication's Global Media Monitoring Project entitled "Who Makes the News?"

“Women make up 52 percent of the population but their voice is denied in media. That’s a human rights issue,” says Anna Turley, coordinator of the women’s project for WACC. “The news media is our primary source of information on what is happening in the world and is very powerful in shaping our opinion of the world. It matters very soundly who and what is covered and how.”

In 2005 researchers for the study, which has been done every five years since 1995, monitored 12,893 news stories in 76 countries on TV, radio and in newspapers. In all there were 25,671 news sources and 14,273 people reporting or presenting these stories.

The findings were stark. Women accounted for just slightly over one in five people in the news or interviewed for the news, up from 17 percent in 1995 and 18 percent in 2000.

At this rate of change, says Turley, it will take until 2060 before women are represented in equal proportion to men in the media.

What's most curious is that women appear to get no better media treatment in advanced countries than in the least developed, where we are wont to assume females are shunted aside from the public eye.

In the U.S., women's appearances in the news are slightly higher than the world average but not by much at 27 percent.

“People have an intuitive sense that this is more serious in developing countries. But we found the same consistent patterns from region to region and country to country,” says Turley.

Further, that 21 percent global figure represents all areas of media coverage, from government and economics on the serious side to things, to entertainment and homemaking stories. And as you might expect, women were featured far less often in the weighty stories. For instance, in political and governmental news only 14 percent of news subjects were women. In economics and business news, women only accounted for 20 percent.

When it comes to expert opinions--the folks interviewed for their thoughts on a specific trend in government or the economy--the gap is even more glaring. Men make up 83 percent of interviewed experts. They also account for 86 percent of spokespeople.

Where women do make the news, it is mainly as stars, such as celebrities or royalty, the study found. Women feature strongly in celebrity news (42 percent) and royalty coverage (33 percent).

In fact it is only in two occupational areas that women outnumber men in the news: homemaker (75 percent) and student (51 percent).

And that brings us to the other curious thing about women in media.

While women journalists have achieved greater equality in numbers with men within media, it seems to be having little effect on the inclusion of women in stories. Is this to suggest that women reporters, given a choice, will choose a male authority over a female to interview on a particular topic?

Probably not. But it does suggest that institutional patterns of news gathering persist, certainly in terms of who gets called first on stories.

“There is still a culture in news media that is predominantly male,” says Turley. But she also believes that the women’s movement has not prioritized media as an area of concern to the extent it should have.

In the U.S., 70 percent of of the people who anchor TV and radio news shows, or presenters as they are called, are women. That's compared to 53 percent globally.

For reporting positions, the folks who are out getting the stories, women account for 36 percent in the U.S., up from 28 percent in 1995.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, two new movies topped the box office charts over the weekend, Disney’s “Eight Below,” bringing in just over $25 million, and the comedy “Date Movie,” which brought in $22.3 million. Last week’s No. 1, “The Pink Panther,” dropped to No. 3 with $21 million brought in.

In home movies, “Flightplan” retained the No. 1 position on billboard’s top video rentals chart for the week ended Feb. 12, with new releases “The Legend of Zorro,” “In Her Shoes” and “Corpse Bride” following.

Kelly Clarkson and Mariah Carey both enjoyed post-Grammys sales boosts and returned to the Billboard 200 album chart for the week ended Feb. 12, with Clarkson’s “Breakaway” at No. 8 and Carey’s “The Emancipation of Mimi” at No. 7. The soundtrack to the movie “Curious George,” recorded by Jack Johnson, claimed the No. 1 spot in its first week in release.

In books, Stephen King’s hot streak continues, with his new book “Cell” taking the top spot on the New York Times’ hardcover fiction bestsellers list for the week ended Feb. 11 and on USA Today’s book chart for the week ended Feb. 12. “Cell” has finished No. 1 on each chart for three straight weeks.

Temporarily available at: http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_2976.asp

Source: Media Life Magazine