Year: 2011

Gender check: 3/8/11 – 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 2:15 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, March 8, was titled “UW basketball standout Overton charged with furnishing alcohol to minor.” Its subject was a University of Washington basketball player who is facing a misdemeanor charge for allegedly provided alcohol to two teenage girls. He also, according to a police report, had sex with both of them but is not facing charges related to those allegations.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, detective (in a report)

2. Female, deputy prosecutor (in a memo)

Notes/analysis: I think the explanation of the alleged sex part of the story is particularly noteworthy. The girls were both 16, which is the legal age of consent in Washington. One of the girls said “she felt like she had to have sex with (the player) because of who he was.” Regarding the decision not to press charges related to one of the girl’s claims of being coerced into the sex act, the deputy prosecutor said state law “places the burden on the victim to clearly communicate a lack of consent to the suspect, which she did not do so,” according to witness statements, including the basketball player in question. The deputy prosecutor calls the case “highly problematic” because the girls participated in the sex under “situational pressure.”


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2:15 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, March 8, was titled “Solved: Guilty plea in slaying of Seattle gang leader.” Its subject was a guilty plea by the male suspect in a 2007 gang-related killing (of a male) on the eve of the trial.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, defense attorney

2. Male, victim (according to witness)

3. Male, co-defendant (when speaking to investigators)

4. Male, senior deputy prosecutor

5. Male, detective (quotes from video)

In the Spotlight: Q&A with Global Girl Media

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

While most of our work here at The Gender Report is focused on identifying the problems and gaps in the representation of women in news coverage, we feel it necessary to take time to recognize those who are working toward solutions. That’s why, starting with this post during Women’s History Month and the week of International Women’s Day, we’re going to try to spend time highlighting an organization that is making strides in this area.

With each feature, we’ll be in correspondence with a member of that organization to have her, or him, answer five questions about its work.

First up, is…

GLOBAL GIRL MEDIA

The Gender Report spoke with Aime Williams, executive director and co-founder of Global Girl Media, via e-mail about the organization’s exciting work to empower teen girls through media training. Here’s what she had to share:

1. For those who are unfamiliar with your work, give us your elevator pitch — What is Global Girl Media?

Global Girl Media (GGM) develops the voice and self-expression of teenage girls in under-served and marginalized communities by training them to become citizen journalists, harnessing the power of new digital media to inspire self-esteem, community activism and social change. By linking young women internationally with seasoned reporters, educators and filmmakers, GGM empowers girls to make media that matters, improves media literacy, and encourages the promotion of healthier media messages about girls and women.

2. What do you consider to be the biggest issue when it comes to the representation of women in journalism and its creation?

Accuracy and complexity. We feel in particular the voices of young women from marginalized or otherwise under-served population are either absent or only heard from in times of war, disaster or crisis, oftentimes victimizing the subject.

Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of the international blog Global Voices, speaking at a recent TED talk stated, “Sure we are becoming more global, our problems are global in scale, economics, environment, but our media is getting less global by the day…” International news as a percentage of an American television broadcast was 35 percent in the 1970s and it is less than 12 percent today. Access to and authorship of media matters because it underpins how societies respond to the problems they face. In the words of the BBC World Trust, “This makes media not only relevant to the most urgent problems of poverty and marginalization — it makes it critical to solutions designed to address them.”

GGM believes that ensuring access to media information and building capacity for authorship of this information is particularly crucial where media resources are scarce, and therefore oftentimes skewed to a particular dominant ideology or bias.

3. How is your organization a part of the solution?

Giobal Girl reporters get tips from an ESPN/Brazil reporter during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. (Courtesy photo)

Our model is unique in that it pairs U.S. communities with international cities, creating a peer-to-peer international network of girls that can break down stereotypes by directly connecting and impacting each other through the internet. Training young women in new media journalism has the unique capability of augmenting all the other aspects of GGM’s activities, cross-cutting between issues of gender equity and self-esteem, cross-cultural communication and media literacy, reproductive rights and economic gains, etc.

What we are attempting to build with our media training program and distribution network is essentially a new model for development: one that sees authentic self-representation as a vibrant partner to economic growth, providing a viable structure for young women to take part in new media for human growth and development.

4. What project are you currently working on that you’re most excited about? Share a little bit about it.

Just as we strategically paired the cities of Los Angeles and Soweto, South Africa, for our pilot program, we have chosen Detroit as the sister city to our two initial international training sites — Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan (Iraq) and Beirut, Lebanon, for our program expansion in 2011-2012. Our reasoning derives from a perceived lack of media being produced from a female perspective in these regions, in particular, young Arab and Muslim women are either entirely absent from mainstream media or grossly misrepresented and stereotyped.

Given the mass freedom movements in this area the world, now is certainly the time for Global Girl Media to be there! In the United States, there is a global curiosity about Middle Eastern and Arab women. People want to know who they are, what they have to say. Michigan has a large Arab Muslim Population and is also undergoing a period of great change.

In Detroit, the national economic crisis could not be more acute, where an historic industry is being rebuilt and the very first Arab American Museum has recently opened. GGM hopes to work within all three communities to help draw parallels, encourage critical dialogue and provide a broader experience for each Global Girl it trains.

5. What needs does your organization have? How can people get involved?

We are always looking to build our capacity and expand our program. We have an ongoing need for office volunteers, as well as program partners for future development. If there are organizations that want to bring our program to their community, we welcome them to reach out to us. We are always looking for co-sponsors, corporate and foundation support.

Find out more about Global Girl Media by visiting its website at www.globalgirlmedia.org. Follow the organization on twitter @GlobalGirlMedia and “like” it on Facebook here.

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Are you a member of an organization that looks to address issues of gender representation in the news? Contact us about being next month’s “In the Spotlight” organization by e-mailing genderreport@gmail.com.

White House study shows persisting gap in wages, despite education advancement

Joy BaconLeave a comment

In the first comprehensive government study of its kind since 1963, President Obama released Women in America this week, examining the “social and economic well-being” of women in the United States.

The New York Times synthesized that across all education levels, women are still earning just 75 percent of men’s wages in comparable positions. NBC Nightly News focused on the study’s findings that more women than men earn college degrees at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Supporting the White House’s concession that the study didn’t necessarily reveal new information, several stories have been published in recent years highlighting this wage gap across professions. Time magazine tackled the topic in a 1982 cover titled “How Long ‘Till Equality?” In 1999, MIT released data that showed female faculty at the science-focused university suffered not only pay disparities, but also less access to awards, resources and opportunities for professional accomplishments. In 2010, Newsweek published a feature about the $66,000 pay gap for female lawyers.

The original study, compiled by Eleanor Roosevelt as a result of President Kennedy’s Commission On the Status of Women, reported disparaging data that eventually led to the Equal Pay Act of 1963.  One of Obama’s first actions in office was to create the Council on Women and Girls, an agency with the goal of ensuring other government agencies “take into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support.”

The study was broken up into sections tackling families and income, education, employment, health, and crime and violence.

Some highlights of the study:

  • The median age for a college educated woman to marry is 30 years old.
  • Female students are more likely to experience electronic bullying than male students.
  • Women continue to outlive men, but their five-year advantage is narrowing the gap that used to exist between male and female longevity.
  • Less women than men have lost their jobs in the recent economic recession (see USA Today’s analysis of the business sector).
  • White women actually experience the largest pay gap of any racial group; Asian women earn 82 percent as Asian men, and African American and Latina women earn 94 and 90 percent of the wage of men in their same racial group, respectively.
  • Rates of women suffering from violent crimes are decreasing.
  • The cesarean rate rose from 21 percent in 1996 to 32 percent in 2008, the highest rate ever reported in the United States.

The full study (which is actually quite readable and user-friendly) can be found here: Women_in_America.

A look at sex

Another study released this week examined a more targeted aspect of women’s participation in society: sexual activity. The National Survey of Family Growth, compiled by the CDC, concluded that abstinence from sexual activity in both women and men aged 15 to 24 has increased by almost 7 percent from the last survey in 2002. However, in the 25-to-44 age group,  98 percent of females and 97 percent of males report having had vaginal intercourse, with about 90 percent having oral sex as well.

Other data noted a significant decrease in teenage pregnancy rates (almost 40 percent), which some have attributed to both increased condom use and delayed sexual activity. The survey also revealed women are more likely to have a same-sex encounter and less likely to have more than 15 sexual partners in their lifetime (male or female).

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: 3/4/11 South

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 Miami Herald

On the Miami Herald, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 4 p.m. (EST) on Friday, March 4 was titled “Scott To Fund Port Of Miami Project ” Its subject was the announcement of $77 million to deep dredge the Port of Miami to allow larger ships to travel there.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – Governor of Florida (from public announcement)

Notes/analysis: The accompanying multimedia story pictured an interview with the director of the Port of Miami (who is male) by another female staff member from the Herald.

Website: Patch (Seminole Heights)

On Patch of Seminole Heights, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 4 p.m. (EST) on March 4 was titled “Childcare Center Under Investigation For Neglect.” Its subject was a 3-year-old boy who was left for several hours in the center’s van.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female- Tampa police spokeswoman

2. Male – local law enforcement (mentioned as choosing to not comment)

3. Male – figure connected to one of the childcare center’s employees

4. Female – mother of a child at the center

Notes/analysis:

Gender check: 3/3/11 – 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 2:45 p.m. (MST) Thursday, March 3, was titled “Jury finds Shepard guilty after he confesses killing University City police sergeant.” Its subject was a man, who the article describes as “mixed race but considers himself black,” being found guilty by a jury after admitting to killing a white police officer, partly as retribution for the shooting of his girlfriend, also black, by a different white police officer who was later cleared in the incident.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, suspect

2. Male, judge

3. Male, prosecutor


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2:45 p.m. (MST) Thursday, March 3, was titled “29,000 answers, one question: How do cities grow?.” Its subject was a look at a population loss of 29,000 people over the course of a decade in St. Louis and what that says about the city and its future.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, resident, talk show host

2. Male, alderman

3. Female, press secretary for mayor

4. Male, director of research

5. Male, executive director of restoration group

6. Male, new arrival

7. Female, new arrival (married to above, moved due to her job)

8. Female, new arrival

9. Male, alderman

10. Male, alderman

11. Male, alderman

12. Female, resident, formerly did city planning work

Notes/analysis: The City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen is composed of 28 ward representatives, eight of which are female.