*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.
Website: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (stltoday.com)
On Stltoday.com, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 1 p.m. (MST) Thursday, April 21, was titled “As hail falls, stories about softballs fly.” Its subject was reports on hail size from a recent storm.
Here is its gender breakdown:
–Author: Male
–Human sources (listed in order mentioned):
1. Male, weather service meteorologist
Notes/analysis:
Website: St. Louis Beacon
On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 1 p.m. (MST) Thursday, April 21, was titled “Survival jobs: A temporary strategy is becoming the new normal.” Its subject was about those who were laid off from higher paying or more career-oriented jobs becoming underemployed so they aren’t unemployed.
Here is its gender breakdown:
–Author: Female
–Human sources (listed in order mentioned):
1. Male, employed in a “survival job,” underemployed
2. Female, former chair of President’s Council of Economic Advisers (while on a panel)
3. Female, federal reserve economist, along with researcher (gender unverifiable) (from study report they wrote)
4. Male, labor analyst
Notes/analysis: It is interesting to note that the author chose a male source as the underemployed example in this story, since it adds to the “mancession” story of the Great Recession. The Gender Report has touched on that briefly in the most recent Week in Review, which noted that the overall unemployment rate is 1 percent higher for men than women over the age of 16, but single women were still hit the hardest by the rise in unemployment. It would be interesting to know what the stats show for this other category the article touches on — those in survival jobs.
The Gender Report 