Author: Jasmine R. Linabary

Gender check: 2/10/11 – 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 the Stltoday.com, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 3:30 p.m. (MST) Thursday, Feb. 10, was titled “Busch girlfriend had lethal doses of cocaine and oxycodone; no prosecution planned.” Its subject was the cause of death of the girlfriend of the former chief executive of Anheuser-Busch.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, prosecuting attorney

2. Male, boyfriend of the deceased

Notes/analysis: It’s noteworthy that the deceased woman whose death is the subject of the story is always defined as being a famous man’s girlfriend, in the headline and the lede. There are details about earlier parts of his life, but readers, at least of this particular article, learn nothing about her — where she’s from, what she did, her family, etc. The only background about her is that she’d been dating him for two years.


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 3:30 p.m. (MST) Thursday, Feb. 10 was titled “The bigger picture of Pruitt-Igoe.” Its subject was a documentary about the myths surrounding a federal housing project.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, resident in housing project

2. Male, documentary producer

3. Male, director

4. Male, journalist

5. Female, film participant

Notes/analysis: The article also contains three mug shots, all of male sources.

Gender check: 2/8/11 – 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 3:15 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 8, was titled “Kemper Freeman quits Bellevue business group his father founded.” Its subject was the departure of a key figure from a business association over differences in opinion, including over an endorsement of light rail.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, developer (main subject)

2. Female, president of the business association

3. Male, chair of the board

4. Male, mayor

5. Male, former association president

Notes/analysis: See below notes.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 3:15 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 8, was titled “Man accused in threats against Seattle Democrat Jim McDermott pleads not guilty.” Its subject was the plea of a California man who made threatening phone calls to a Congressman’s office.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, suspect charged

2. Male, special agent

3. Female, U.S. attorney

Notes/analysis: The headlines on both articles this week included mentions of at least two male subjects, one by name in each. These men were then the focal points of the articles. Prior studies, such as the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project, have shown that less than 15 percent of news items focus on women or female subjects. 

Gender check: 2/3/11 – 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 4:30 p.m. (MST) Thursday, Feb. 3, was titled “Metro seeks termination of bus driver in fatal St. Louis crash.” Its subject was an incident earlier in the day in which a 60-year-old woman died after being run over by a bus. The male bus driver did not realize it happened.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female, metro spokeswoman

2. Male, witness (unnamed)

3. Male, police officer

Notes/analysis: This story is evolving and being constantly updated, but it’s interesting to note at this point that though the female source is the first referenced (in the lede), she’s not named until much later in the story, after the other two sources (both male) are mentioned.


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 4:30 p.m. (MST) Thursday, Feb. 3, was titled “Companies, lawmakers battle ‘antidumping’ tariffs on magnesium.” Its subject was an anticipated U.S. International Trade Commission vote on continuing tariffs on imports of magnesium and its impacts.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, company vice-president of operations

2. Male, general manager of different die-casting company

3. Female and male, two U.S. Senators in a letter

4. Male, U.S. Senator

5.  Male, a company president

6. Female, marketing director

Notes/analysis: This article relied heavily on upper management sources within die-casting companies.

Gender check: 2/1/11 – 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 2:45 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 1, was titled “Authorities fooled again by dangerous inmate?” Its subject was concerns over the safety of officers in the Department of Corrections following the death of a female correctional officer. A male prisoner is suspected of strangling her.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male and female (dual byline). In addition, a male and female contributed.

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, deputy prisons director

2. Female, governor

3. Female, secretary of a corrections officer union

4. Male, department of corrections secretary

5. Male, relative of victim

6. Female, daughter of long-time boyfriend of victim

7. Female, police spokeswoman

8. Male, former inmate

9. Male, spokesman

10. Male, prison director

11. Female, retired corrections officer and administrator

12. Male, retired prison sergeant

Notes/analysis: For an article with a large number of sources, this was fairly well balanced in terms of its gender breakdown with five women out of 12 sources. As has started to come out, this wasn’t the first time a female officer was attacked in this facility. Two women working at the same complex the victim in this case did were allegedly attacked in the last six months. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, men outnumber women three to one among correctional officers and custody staff that work in direct contact with inmates. Men also make up the vast majority of prisoners. Approximately 91.9 percent of Washington state’s prisoners in 2009 were men, according to an offender fact card from the state Department of Corrections.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2:45 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 1, was titled “State settles ‘horrific’ Seattle child-abuse case for $6.55 million.” Its subject was a settlement by the state Department of Health and Human Services regarding case in which six boys were abused for years and repeated complaints were made without follow up.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, attorney

2. Female, Department of Social and Health Services spokeswoman

Week in Review: Jan. 24-28

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

*Week in Review is 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.

State of the Union

President Barack Obama gave his second State of the Union address Tuesday, discussing a plan to “win the future.” Media outlets focused in on key issues in the speech such as investing in education and infrastructure to stay competitive with other nations as well as working to reduce the deficit.

The blogosphere was a”twitter” with commentary, including some women who noted the absence of certain social issues. During their #sheparty discussion on Twitter on Wednesday, the Women’s Media Center asked what the take was on Obama’s speech. Commenters noticed missing issues such as equal pay, violence against women and abortion.

Also observed was the coverage of the speech. A post at Feministing provided a roundup of commentary on the address, noting at the end that it was “virtually impossible to find any female pundits commenting on the SOTU on the nation’s most notable progressive media outlets.”

At the same time, the Women’s Media Center released its report card for Obama on the state of the union for women and children, giving him an overall pass “with room for improvement.” Obama’s lowest grade on the report card, aside from some incompletes, was a C for appointing women. It cites the Center for American Women and Politics and notes that Obama appointed women to fill seven of 22 existing cabinet or sub-cabinet positions, or approximately 32 percent. The high for women was under President Bill Clinton at 42 percent. It also partly holds Obama responsible as a leader of the Democratic party for the lack of women running in recent elections. Quoting Katherine Kleeman with the CAWP, the report card notes, “the Democrats aren’t putting as much effort as the Republicans into grooming great women candidates at the local level.”

In other news

Also this week, women were part of the dialogue on the situations on Tunisia and Egypt. N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, a professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, has noted that women are playing significant roles in these social movements. She says, “Even if African and Middle Eastern women don’t always have easy access to public platforms to express their ideas and voice their opinions,… they have consistently constituted a formidable and determining force in the struggle against any system of oppression.”

Here are a couple articles to check out if you’ve missed them.

-NPR: “In Tunisia, Women Play Equal Role In Revolution”

-AFP: “Tunisian women fear Islamist return”

-Guardian: “An eyewitness account (by a woman) of the Egypt protests”

-Daily Beast: “Egypt Revolution: the Purity Protests” (Women increasingly taking part in the politics of the street)