Year: 2011

Gender check: 3/22/11 – West

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*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: Seattle Times

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 5:15 p.m. (MST) March 22, was titled “City suspends DUI cases while police investigate rubber-stamping of arrests.” Its subject was an investigation into the process of DUI cases at the city police department.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Two males, one female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, city attorney

2. Male, head of police union

3. Female, spokeswoman for city attorney’s office

4. Male, police department spokesman

5. Male, spokesman for county attorney’s office

6. Male, sergeant with county sheriff’s office

7. Female, spokeswoman for state patrol

Notes/analysis: The article also contained quotes from written statements.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 5:15 p.m. (MST) on March 22, was titled “Kentlake teacher accused of having sex with 17-year-old student, charged with sexual misconduct.” Its subject was a female high school teacher charged with having sex with a male student.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female, suspect (according to the charging documents)

2. Female, detective

3. Male, senior deputy prosecutor

Notes/analysis: Other than the boy, the only other additional subject mentioned was his mother.

Second month sees decrease in female sources

Joy BaconLeave a comment

We completed our second month’s worth of Gender Checks last week and the results showed a widening gap between male and female representation in news sites.

Our findings are close to being in line with other studies that have been done on gender representation in the news, and, though the results aren’t encouraging for women, they do tell us that our process seems to be working.

Before we fill you in on the results we’d like to remind our readers that this is just a single month’s worth of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you understand the limitations of this data, however telling. We’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research is needed to verify any validity across the board.

Feb. 21 – March 21, 2011

We reviewed 30 articles, two in each Gender Check. Each geographical region had four Gender Checks, with the exception of the South, which had three (We missed one week).

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. We recorded information such as the gender of the author and the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles among other details.  (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Overall, these were the findings:

Sourcing

The articles contained 99 male sources and 26 female sources, which put women at about 21 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This is a slightly lower percentage of female sources than the Global Media Monitoring Project found in 2010 — approximately 23 percent of the news subjects on the 84 websites monitored were women.

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 23 males, 4 female (Women at 14.8 percent)
  • Northeast: 28 males, 3 females (Women at 9.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 39 males, 11 females (Women at 22 percent)
  • South: 9 male, 8 female (Women at 47 percent)

And, as an additional aspect we’re interested to study over time, here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 41 males, 8 females (Women at 16.3 percent)
  • Online-only:  58 males, 18 females (Women at  23.6 percent)

As we did our Gender Checks this month, the context of sources is particularly useful in examining gender breakdown in sources. We focused on several stories that used government officials, or focused on traditionally male-dominated fields such as law or the financial sector.  It’s an aspect of this issue that we’ll continue to look at in the future. Also important to note is that a decreased number of sources makes for more dramatic data points.

Authorship

Overall, 9 articles were written by an individual woman and 18 by a single man. In addition, two articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 1 by an individual woman, 6 by a man, 1 by a man and a woman (1 by contributors)
  • Northeast: 1 by a woman, 6 by a man
  • Midwest: 5 by a woman, 3 by men
  • South: 2 by a woman, 3 by men, 1 by a man and a woman

And, here’s the look by news website association:

  • Newspaper website: 7 by a woman, 5 by a man, 2 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 2 by a woman, 13 by a man

When looking at the gender gap in the authors, we’ll also need to keep in mind the make-up of the individual news website’s staff and who is on duty to publish to the web on the day we do our Gender Checks each week. Those factors could play a role in our final results and are elements we’ll be looking into in the future.

Check out how this data compares to last month’s Gender Report on sources and authorship.

We’ll be posting our results like this on a monthly and quarterly basis. As time goes by, we’ll be looking for other trends, including the subjects featured as lead articles on these news websites and what kind of correlation that may have to the gender of the author and the sources. We’ll also be seeking out and sharing the existing explanations on why we see the trends we do.

This is only the beginning of the data we hope to gather here at The Gender Report. Stay tuned for our weekly Gender Checks from each region. Additionally, we’ll be exploring other ways of looking at gender representation in the news in coming posts.

We’re also interested in your feedback. How are we doing? What information are you interested in when it comes to gender representations in online news? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or e-mail us at genderreport@gmail.com.

Push for women’s rights brushed aside in Middle East upheavals

Joy BaconLeave a comment

As conflicts continue in Libya and the surrounding regions, women’s roles in these revolutions are starting to become more publicized. We’ve highlighted before the active role women took in the protests in Egypt. However, women’s success in pushing for equal rights has not always been as successful as their pushes for new government systems.

Time Magazine reported that in Libya, women lawyers were among the earliest anti-Qaddafi organizers in the revolutionary stronghold of Benghazi. This week, thousands of women marched in support of the no-fly zone. The BBC reported protests across Yemen for International Women’s Day, amidst the country’s other issues of political unrest.

However, Tunisian women organizing a post-revolution rally were met with cries to “return to the kitchen.” The Christian Science Monitor reported that over 200 men violently attacked a march in Cairo for International Women’s Day. In Egypt, the 10-member Constitutional Committee, which was tasked with coming up with constitutional amendments for the new president, didn’t include a single woman; Tunisia’s transition government likewise only appointed 2 women. An article in the new Egyptian Constitution also effectively limits the presidency to men.

CNN reported similar trends towards post-revolution exclusion. Even in Bahrain, where since 2006 women have been able to vote and hold many more rights than neighboring countries, women’s rights, especially concerning family law, are not on the table. Under the old Tunisian government,  women enjoyed nearly all the same rights as men, and they made great strides in all fields including law, medicine and media. Now, some fear the country could see a regression in women’s rights under the new leadership.

Even in Iraq, as a fledgling democracy begins to take shape, women are being left out of the political arena. The New York Times reported that women have less political influence today than at any time since the American invasion. Only 1 ministry is led by a women, compared to 6 between 2005 and 2006. Ashwaq Abbas, a female member of Parliament from the Kurdish Alliance bloc, told the Times that  “democracy should also include women, and the rights of women should be developed as the democracy here develops. But what’s actually happened is that the rights of women have gotten worse over time.”

In Egypt and across the region, as more countries begin to deal with political unrest and calls for revolution, women’s rights have yet to be seen as a just cause for equality, and rather as a special interest agenda. Mozn Hassan, director of the Cairo-based group Nazra for Feminist Studies, said this to TIME:  “Women’s activists have to change their dynamic, and engage with larger political issues. But we don’t expect it to be easy. Tahrir Square was a utopia, and society doesn’t change in fifteen minutes.”

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Gender check: 3/17/11 – Midwest

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*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 2 p.m. (MST) Thursday, March 17, was titled “Death penalty supporters advance bills in Illinois House.” Its subject was efforts to reinstate the death penalty in the state of Illinois.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

2. Male, state representative


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2 p.m. (MST) Thursday, March 17, was titled “Missouri House debate on Prop B reveals deep rural-urban split.” Its subject was a debate on regulations around dog breeding currently in the Missouri House.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, state representative

2. Male, state representative

3. Male, state senator

4. Male, president of the Humane Society of the United States

5. Male, state representative

6. Male, state representative

7. Male, state senator

8. Female, state senator

9. Female, state representative

10. Male, state representative

11. Male, state representative

12. Male, political science professor

13. Male, governor

14. Male, state House speaker

Notes/analysis: A lot of male voices dominated this story, but, as discussed in earlier Gender Checks, they also make up the majority of legislators in Missouri’s state government. However, the House has more of a balance than the Senate. Women make up more than 40 percent of the state House, while constituting only 23 percent of the state Senate.

Gender Check 3/16/11 – Northeast

Joy BaconLeave a comment
*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: The New York Times

On The New York Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 8 p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 16 was titled “U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ And Urges Deeper Caution In Japan.” Its subject was the developments with Japan’s damaged nuclear reactors.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Authors: Male (three bylines)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission

2. Male – spokesman for Tokyo Electric

3. Male – spokesman for NRC

4. Female – U.S. senator

5. Male – U.S. energy secretary

Notes/analysis: As much of the news will be dominated by the developing crisis and recovery in Japan, a study of the photographs is particularly interesting from a gender breakdown. Are women more prominent in photos of the surviving victims?

Website: ProPublica

On ProPublica, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 8:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 16 was titled “Army Plans New Guidelines To Resolve Denials Of Purple Hearts to Brain-Injured Soldiers.” Its subject was a possible change in guidelines to accept brain injuries as legitimate combat injuries, making those soldiers eligible for the distinguished honor. The story was a co-investigation with a reporter from NPR.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Authors: Male (dual byline)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – Army general

2. Male – senior medical officer

3. Male – Army director of soldier programs and services

4. Male – U.S. congressman

5. Female – Army wife and founder of related organization

6. Male – retired army sergeant

Notes/analysis: