Findings and Statistics

New study: Women hold less than one-third of top news media jobs

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

A new global study released in March revealed that women currently hold 27 percent of top management jobs and 26 percent of governing jobs in the news media.

"The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media"

“The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media” was put together by the International Women’s Media Foundation. It was released March 23 at the foundation’s International Women Media Leader’s Conference. The extensive study looked at roughly 170,000 people in more than 500 companies and nearly 60 countries.

The report is a 396-page PDF document available in full online. It provides breakdowns from seven geographical regions as well as findings from individual nations.

This first-time study was conducted over a two-year period with an aim to provide detailed data on gender positions in new organizations worldwide.

The study looked at information on occupational standings, salaries, terms of employment and a variety of other issues that affect gender status. The study looked only at traditional media including newspapers, television and radio stations, with newspapers making up almost half of the sample.

The study’s key finding was that 73 percent of the top management jobs were occupied by men, compared to women at 27 percent. Twenty out of 59 nations studied had identifiable “glass ceilings” for women in middle and upper management.

The report points out in the executive summary that a 1995 study by Margaret Gallagher showed women in only 12 percent of the management positions in 239 nations.

In positions that actually produce the news, the study found that women hold 36 percent of reporter jobs, or positions at the “junior professional level.” Interestingly the senior professional level, which includes anchors, senior writers and producers, has more parity with women in 41 percent of positions.

Those findings match other studies that have looked simply at bylines. “Who Makes the News? Global Media Monitoring Project 2010” also found similar results when it looked at authorship of articles culled on a given day in 2009. Overall, 37 percent of stories in the whole sample were reported by women.

A closer look at the United States

In the summary of the findings from the United States, the report shows that across the news media women make up 41 percent of the total work force. The study included 14 U.S. news companies, 10 of which were newspapers. They in total employed approximately 3,000 people.

In the U.S. portion of the study, women made up 23.3 percent of those in top-level management and 35.3 percent of those in governance. The study shows women at near parity with men at the junior professional level, or reporter positions, at 47.2 percent but not as close at the senior professional level at 35.7 percent.

It also identified a “glass ceiling” for women in U.S. newsrooms once they reach the senior management level. After that their presence drops from 41.5 percent to the 23.3 percent at the top-level management.

Coverage in the news

A number of news and industry sources picked up on the survey and reported and commented on it. Here are a few:

For more studies and resources on gender in the news media, view our “Useful Resources” page.

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.

Women make up 27.6% of sources in first month

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

We completed our first month’s worth of Gender Checks last week and the results were, well, not terribly surprising.

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.

Jan. 18 – Feb. 18, 2011

We reviewed 38 articles, two in each Gender Check. Each geographical region had five Gender Checks, with the exception of the South, which had four (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 144 male sources and 55 female sources, which put women at about 27. 6 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This is a slightly higher 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: 29 males, 17 females (Women at 37 percent)
  • Northeast: 65 males, 19 females (Women at 22.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 34 males, 10 females (Women at 22.7 percent)
  • South: 16 male, 9 female (Women at 36 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: 66 males, 31 females (Women at 32 percent)
  • Online-only: 78 males, 24 females (Women at 23.5 percent)

As we did our Gender Checks this month, we tried to provide context as we could when the gender gap in the sourcing was particularly stark — such as the number of women in that profession (like this one on female judges) or in that political arena (like this one on women in the Missouri Legislature) — because sometimes that becomes a factor in source selection. It’s an aspect of this issue that we’ll continue to look at in the future.

Authorship

Overall, 11 articles were written by an individual woman and 19 by a single man. In addition, three articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman, four were shared bylines by men, and one was written by three men and one woman. If we just look at the articles written by a single author, women made up 36.7 percent of the authors — roughly what the GMMP in 2010 found.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 5 by an individual woman, 4 by a man, 1 by a man and a woman
  • Northeast: 1 by a woman, 6 by one to three men, 2 by a man and a woman, 1 by three men and one woman
  • Midwest: 2 by a woman, 8 by men (one of which was by two men)
  • South: 3 by a woman, 5 by men (one of which was written by two men)

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

  • Newspaper website: 8 by a woman, 8 by a man or multiple men, 3 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 3 by a woman, 15 by a man, 1 by three men and one woman

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.

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.

Gender and media: By the numbers

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

To give a starting point for readers of this site to understand what is known about gender representation in online and mainstream or traditional media, here’s snapshot of some of the numbers.

These figures come from the “Who Makes the News? Global Media Monitoring Project 2010.” This was the first time the study, which is released every five years, included Internet news as a pilot. The chosen day for the study was Nov. 10, 2009, and the study as a whole with all media platforms included media from 100 countries. Sixteen countries were included in the pilot study for online news based on their level of Internet access. The United States was not one of them, though some international news sites were.

Here are some of the numbers:

News subjects:
-24 percent of the people heard or read on traditional platforms like newspapers, television and radio were female in the sample.
-23 percent of the news subjects on the 84 websites monitored were women.

Story focus:
-13 percent of the news items in traditional media focus specifically on women.
-11 percent of the online news stories were centered around women.

Authorship:
-41 percent of stories reported on traditional platforms were by female reporters in the same countries as the Internet pilot. Overall, 37 percent of stories in the whole sample were reported by women.
-36 percent of the news stories in the online samples were reported by women.

Stereotypes:
-46 percent of the stories monitored in traditional media reinforced gender stereotypes, while only 6 percent challenged these stereotypes.
-42 percent of the online news stories were found to reinforce gender stereotypes and only 4 percent challenged them.

These statistics, and more detailed ones on each topics area offered in the report, seem to imply that online news sites follow the same vein as traditional news platforms when it comes to gender. However, it’s noted in the study’s executive summary that “the differences, some of which are statistically significant, point to a conclusion that Internet news is a format in which gender biases become not only more visible but even more concentrated than in the traditional news media.”

Those differences and their extent are some of the topics we hope to delve into further here at The Gender Report — specifically how they reveal themselves in U.S. online media in both news sites with roots in traditional media and those that are online only. Through our Gender Checks, we’ll be recording information similar to what was culled for the GMMP’s study on Internet news stories. We’ll see if our findings are similar.

Read the full report from the “Global Media Monitoring Project 2010” at www.whomakesthenews.org.