Global Trends Preventing Women’s Involvement in Media

By Michelle J. Foster

Partner at Newsgain

Women journalists face unique pressures throughout the world, leading to their under-representation in newsrooms. Yet diverse newsrooms are more likely to cultivate diverse news content, and in many countries, the lack of women reporters leads directly to a lack of women sources.

The International Women’s Media Foundation’s (IWMF) 2017 global report found that across more than 500 companies in nearly 60 countries, 73% of top management jobs in news organizations were occupied by men compared to 27% occupied by women.  Among reporters, 64% were male and only were 36% female. The same IWMF study also observed that men are far more likely to hold full-time jobs in news media (66.7%) versus women (33.3%), and are more likely to be in senior roles.  This, of course, has implications for women reporters’ job security and overall earnings. It also undermines their ability to cover stories, cultivate sources, and develop professional skills as they work fewer hours, in lesser roles.

A significant obstacle to both the presence of women’s voices in news media and bylines by women journalists is the perception in many places that women’s work has less value than that of men.  In many places in the world, men are viewed as the ones who do the “real” reporting while women are asked to perform clerical functions or only cover “women’s topics.” For those that break free of these stereotypes, their work is often patronized.  

News of and by women are largely an afterthought, despite the reality that women audiences are highly valued by advertisers as key decision-makers in consumer spending.

These and other reasons help explain women’s absence in news across the globe:

Institutional Forces

These take many forms.  Few newsrooms achieve gender parity in hiring.  Some of it is neglect: hiring women is not a priority. Some of it is by design: companies prefer not to hire women. Yet in too many places, there is no legal recourse against discrimination and women are unable to seek redress for this lack of opportunity.  For example, in Myanmar, the 2008 Constitution “provides a loophole for discrimination which states, ‘nothing in this section shall prevent the appointment of men to positions that are naturally suitable for men only.’”  (Gender in Myanmar News, 2017)

Thus, there are seldom pipelines of qualified women ready to advance in the workforce and openings are easily filled with male journalists.  Where training programs exist to advance women in management roles, they are frequently unsophisticated, filled with more “touchy-feely” topics such as self-confidence, and less focus on topics like business management, audience research, or finance.

Deeply entrenched bias about what is newsworthy

Editors frequently fail to find news about women as interesting or prestigious to cover as news about men. “Male” news is perceived to be investigative, hard-hitting. News organizations fail to cultivate expert women sources, so women are portrayed mainly in their roles as homemakers, mothers, sex objects, or victims. Female reporters are balkanized into soft beats such us health, education, culture, and entertainment.

Dr. Xanthe Scharff, founder of the Fuller Project for International Reporting and an expert on gender, noted “this bias among editors affects so much.  They place much less relative value on women’s contributions in many areas … Journalism’s role in writing history is outsized and it is vital that we get it right at the outset. When women and their contributions are ignored or discounted in original reporting, it has long term effects on the overall picture of that period of time or series of events.”

Violence, threats of violence, and legal persecution

There is a full range of gendered attacks that are used against women in media. Khadija Ismayilova, an Azerbaijani investigative reporter who published details of the corrupt business activities of the president and his family, was blackmailed and threatened that sexual images of her would be released publicly if she did not ‘behave.’ She didn’t, and the images were shared online. She was later imprisoned for 537 days on fabricated charges to silence her reporting, and Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court has continued its harassment by upholding trumped-up charges of tax evasion against her. (Washington Post, Aug. 2019)

Even reporting on women, not just being a female reporter, can be deadly. Reporters Without Borders found that covering women’s rights, whether the reporter is female or male, carries substantial risks. Its observed that “from 2012 to 2017, the rights of at least 90 journalists in around 20 countries were seriously violated because they dared to cover or talk about women’s rights or gender issues. Several months of research yielded the following chilling breakdown of these cases: 11 of these journalists were murdered, 12 were imprisoned, at least 25 were physically attacked, and at least 40 others were or are still being threatened on social networks.” (Reporters Without Borders, Women’s Rights: Forbidden Subject, 2018)

Cultural constraints

These are vast, implicit and often unrecognized. In Somalia, strict taboos exist restricting contact between unrelated males and females that limits who can be interviewed, and by whom. In Myanmar, religious arguments are used to justify the demands that women take submissive or subordinate roles, and families are reluctant to have their daughters traveling alone or after dark, thus limiting their ability to report.

Internews established community radio stations in Chad – including training women journalists - to help refugees fleeing Darfur receive critical life-saving information. Photo credit: Internews

Marriage, children, and lack of access to childcare

Media owners in developing countries are often frustrated that their investments in training female journalists are “wasted” because once they marry and/or have children, they leave the workforce. This is not wholly inaccurate. In many countries cultural norms place great pressures on women to exist in traditional roles once they are married and have children. And media organizations seldom provide child or health care services that would support the continued advancement of women in the workforce.

Misogyny and sexual harassment

Examples of these are nearly boundless, exhaustive … and exhausting.  Practices range from the types of sexual predation that came to the fore in the Harvey Weinstein case in the U.S., but in countries with far fewer legal protections for the victims, to online harassment and social media flaming. These situations were addressed head-on in an open letter shared on the Niemen Lab site putting forth 14 principles of gender equality for the news industry. (Barnathan, et.al., June 19 2018)