women in the news

Lowest showing of female bylines yet found in ninth month of Gender Check project

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

During the latest month of our Gender Check monitoring project, only 25 percent of authors were women, the lowest percentage yet in this project. The only other time the percentage of female bylines dipped below 30 percent was in the third month of our study, when women bylined 26.9 percent of articles by an author of one gender or the other.

This marked the ninth month of this project, which began in January 2011. Later this week we’ll share findings from the first three quarters of our year-long endeavor.

Here’s the breakdown of our findings:

Ninth Month: Sept. 19 – Oct. 21, 2011

During the ninth month, we reviewed 28 articles, two in each Gender Check. That included five Gender Checks from the West and Midwest geographic regions and two from both the Northeast and the South.

As part of each Gender Check, our monitors look at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that is online-only. We then select the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and collect information on the author’s (or authors’) gender and the genders of the human sources referenced among other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

This month the articles contained 26 female sources and 70 male sources, making women 27 percent of human sources whose gender could be identified. Three of this month’s articles contained no identified sources.

Here’s how sourcing broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 20 males, 9 female (Women at 31 percent)
  • Northeast: 11 males, 1 females (Women at 8.3 percent)
  • Midwest: 37 males, 11 females (Women at 22.9 percent)
  • South: 2 male, 5 female (Women at 71.4 percent)

We’ve also broken down our findings by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not. Here are this month’s results:

  • Newspaper website: 48 males, 14 females (Women at 22.6 percent)
  • Online-only: 22 males, 12 females (Women at 35.3 percent)

Authorship

During this month, six articles were written by one or more woman and 18 by one or more man. That gave women 25 percent of bylines of one gender or another. There were also two shared bylines between a man and a woman (or two), one by staff and another that’s author was unknown.

Here’s the break down of bylines by geographic region:

  • West: 3 stories by women, 6 by men, 1 by staff
  • Northeast: None by a woman, 3 by men and 1 with a shared byline between a man and two women
  • Midwest: 2 by a woman, 7 by men, 1 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • South: 1 by a woman, 2 by a man, 1 unknown

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 4 by women, 9 by men and 1 with a shared byline between a man and woman
  • Online-only: 2 by a woman, 9 by men, 1 with a shared byline, 1 by staff and 1 unknown

As a reminder to our readers, these findings reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

In July, we released our findings from our first six months of monitoring. During that time, women were 25.3 percent of human sources referenced and 37.7 percent of authors of one gender or the author. Keep an eye out for findings to-date from the first three-quarters of the year later this week.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category. 

Women see increase in bylines in eighth month of Gender Checks

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Women made up 24.3 percent of sources and 44.8 percent of authors in the eighth month of our Gender Check monitoring project. That reflected a rise in women authors over last month, when women had 35 percent of bylines.

Here’s the breakdown of our findings for the eighth month:

Eighth Month: Aug. 22 – Sept. 15, 2011

We reviewed 32 articles, two in each Gender Check, during our eighth month. That included four Gender Checks from each geographic region.

In each Gender Check, we look at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that is online-only. During our monitoring, we pull the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and gather details on the gender of the author, the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles and other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

This month the articles contained 81 male sources and 26 female sources. This meant women made up 24.3 percent of the human sources referenced. Five articles this month contained no named sources.

Here’s how that broke out by geographic region:

  • West: 19 males, 8 female (Women at 29.6 percent)
  • Northeast: 18 males, 5 females (Women at 21.7 percent)
  • Midwest: 34 males, 6 females (Women at 15 percent)
  • South: 10 male, 7 female (Women at 41.2 percent)

Here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 50 males, 14 females (Women at 21.9 percent)
  • Online-only:  31 males, 12 females (Women at 27.9 percent)

Authorship

This month 13 articles were written by an individual woman and 16 by one or more man. That put women at 44.8 percent of bylines of one gender or another for the month. Additionally, there were three shared bylines between a man and a woman (or two). This was one of the higher byline percentages for women in the study and an increase over the 35 percent women reached last month.

Here’s how bylines broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 3 stories by an individual woman, 5 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 2 by a woman, 5 by men and 1 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • Midwest: 4 by a woman, 3 by a man, 1 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • South: 4 by a woman, 3 by a man, 1 with a shared byline between a man and two women

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 7 by a woman, 7 by men and 2 with a shared byline between a man and woman (or two)
  • Online-only: 6 by a woman, 9 by a man, 1 with a shared byline

As a note to our readers, these findings reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

In July, we released our findings from our first six months of monitoring. During that time, women were 25.3 percent of human sources referenced and 37.7 percent of authors of one gender or the author.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category. 

Report Your Thoughts: Why does it matter?

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

Editor’s note: Our findings through our monitoring projects have served to identify and bring attention to the fact that women’s voices are missing, but have left us with more questions than answers. That’s why we’re taking our project a step further by starting a discussion on why this is the case and what can be done about it. This is part of a series of posts each week aiming to start a discussion on gender representations in online news. View past “Report Your Thoughts” discussions here.

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Question 3: Why does it matter?

For the past two weeks since we launched our “Report Your Thoughts” discussion, we’ve asked and discussed (mostly via the Twitter hashtag #GRdiscuss) the basic question of “Why?” — Why are women present in such low numbers in our byline counts of lead articles as well as our looks inside newsrooms? And why are women’s voices absent among news sources?

Now we want to turn the discussion in a different direction to the question: Why does it matter? If women are a quarter or less of news sources and slightly over a third of authors, what difference does that make?

We want to hear from you. Why is it important that women have a part in producing the news and have their voices heard as news sources? Share your thoughts in the comment section as well as on Twitter with the hashtag #GRdiscuss or on our Facebook page.

Update: As has been the case, most of the discussion for this week’s question took place via Twitter using the hashtag #GRdiscuss. A few people and organizations took part by commenting on the question. Others retweeted and shared parts of the discussion.

Here are some of the highlights:

Despite reduced sample, women lose ground in authorship in seventh month

Joy BaconLeave a comment

Seventh Month: July 26 – August 18, 2011

During our seventh month of Gender Checks, we reviewed 22 articles, two in each Gender Check with some regions not reporting out each week. For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. For our monitoring, we pulled the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and gathered information on the gender of the author, the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles and other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

Overall, the articles contained 52 male sources and 17 female sources, which meant women were 24.6 percent of the human sources referenced.

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 25 males, 2 female (Women at 7.4 percent)
  • Northeast: 8 males, 3 females (Women at 27.3 percent)
  • Midwest: 19 males, 12  females (Women at 38.7 percent)
  • South: Not included in this report

Here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 27 males, 9 females (Women at  25 percent)
  • Online-only: 25 males, 8 females (Women at 24.2 percent)

Authorship

This month 7 articles were written by an individual woman and 13 by one or more man, which meant women were 35 percent of authors of one gender or the other this month, which is a drop from 43.3 percent the previous month. The highest came in the fourth month with women as 57.1 percent of bylines, the only month that women were in the majority. There were two shared bylines between a man and a woman each for a print and online site.

Here’s how bylines broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 1 story by an individual woman, 7 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 3 by a woman, 1 by a man and 2 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • Midwest: 3 by a woman, 5 by a man
  • South: Not included in this report.

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 3 by a woman, 7 by a man and 1 with a shared byline between a man and woman
  • Online-only: 4 by a woman, 6 by a man, 1 with a shared byline

As always, we remind our readers that these findings reflect a limited amount of data (a month’s worth) from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category. Read our report from our first six months of Gender Checks here.

Six months: Findings on women as sources, authors in Gender Check monitoring project

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Editor’s note: Six months ago, we set out to look at how women are represented in online news both as sources and as authors. To mark our progress, this week we’re reviewing our findings as well as unveiling new statistics based on what we’ve uncovered thus far in a series of posts. View other six-month coverage here.

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On Jan. 18, 2011, we began a project to monitor U.S. news websites as part of an effort to look at gender representations in online news.

In this effort, we monitored two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only — in four different geographic regions once a week. These websites included the Seattle Times, Seattle P-I, New York Times, ProPublica, Stltoday.com, St. Louis Beacon, Miami Herald and Patch (Seminole Heights).

We pulled the lead article from each site at the time we visited and performed a “Gender Check” by recording information on 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.)

Last week, with our Gender Check from the South, we completed six months’ worth of monitoring. Between Jan. 18 and July 22, we monitored a total of 190 articles, averaging about 32 articles a month. This included 52 articles each from the West and Midwest regions, 46 articles from the Northeast and 40 articles from the South. These lower counts in the Northeast and South may have some slight affect overall, but these regions’ standings among the others have remained fairly consistent over time.

Without further ado, here are our findings:

Sourcing

During our first six months of Gender Checks, women made up 25.3 percent of human sources referenced in the articles we monitored. This broke down to 572 male sources and 194 female sources. This does not include those whose gender could not be identified.

The high came with women as 30.4 percent of sources in the fourth month followed by our low at 19.5 percent in the fifth month.

Seventy-one of the 190 articles monitored contained only male sources (no female sources), or roughly 37.4 percent. This compared to 11 articles with only female sources, or 5.8 percent. Four articles contained no sources at all.

Among geographic regions, the West and the South both had the highest percentage of women as sources at roughly 30 percent. The Northeast was the lowest at 20.7 percent.

Here’s how that broke down geographically:

  • West: 128 males, 55 female (Women at 30 percent)
  • Northeast: 207 males, 54 females (Women at 20.7 percent)
  • Midwest: 158 males, 51 females (Women at 24.4 percent)
  • South: 79 male, 34 female (Women at 30.1 percent)

Online-only outlets have continued a trend of using a slightly higher percentage of female sources than those associated with a newspaper that we first started observing in our first quarter findings. After six months, women were 28.1 percent of sources at online-only sites versus 22.4 percent at newspaper-connected sites. This trend of the online-only sites having the higher percentage of female sources held true in every region. Among the newspaper sites were the two lowest percentages of woman as sources, coming from the New York Times (only 14.2 percent) and Stltoday.com (at 19 percent). We’ll note that when you divide out the numbers by individual news sites, the number of articles in our sample is still low, so that should be kept in mind. We’ll still need to see if those trends for specific news sites hold over time.

Online-only sites also had a few more sources overall, attributable to the fact that the St. Louis Beacon and then ProPublica had the highest number of sources in our study. However, the number was brought down by the Patch site in the category, which had the lowest number of sources in our sample.

  • Newspaper website: 291 males, 84 females (Women at 22.4 percent)
  • Online-only:  281 males, 110 females (Women at 28.1 percent)

Authorship

Overall, women wrote 66 of the articles in our study, while men bylined 109. Fourteen articles had a shared byline between a man (or men) and a woman. One article was by contributors. This meant women bylined 34.7 percent of articles in our study, and 37.7 percent of articles by a person (or persons) of one gender or the other.

Eleven articles were written by more than one man, but no articles in our sample were written by more than one woman.

During one month of our study, the count of women’s bylines exceeded that of men. In the fourth month, women bylined 16 of 32 stories. Men wrote 12 and the remainder were shared bylines between a man and a woman.

When the numbers are looked at by geographic region, the Northeast had the lowest percentage of female bylines with 23.9 percent of the articles. In our sites from the South, women were near parity with 45 percent.

  • West: 17 stories by an individual woman, 32 by one or more man, two with a shared byline between a man and a woman, one by contributors (Women at 32.7 percent overall)
  • Northeast: 11 by an individual woman, 28 by one or more man, seven with a shared byline (Women at 23.9 percent overall)
  • Midwest: 20 by a woman, 28 by one or more man, four with a shared byline (Women at 38.5 percent overall)
  • South: 18 by a woman, 21 by one or more man, one with a shared byline (Women at 45 percent overall)

In bylines we again observed another trend we began seeing during our first quarter findings. Though newspaper-related sites may have fewer female sources than their online-only counterparts, they do fair better than them when it comes to bylines. Of the articles from newspaper sites in our study, 38.9 percent were bylined by women. This compared to 30.5 percent at online-only outlets. The same trend held true in all geographic regions, except the Northeast, where ProPublica had a very slightly higher percentage of female bylines than the New York Times — a difference at this point of less than a percent.

  • Newspaper website: 37 by a woman, 47 by one or more man, 10 with shared bylines between a man and woman, one by contributors (Women at 38.9 percent overall)
  • Online-only: 29 by a woman, 62 by one or more man, four with shared bylines (Women at 30.5 percent overall)

Author gender and source selection

Like we have with our other recent monitoring studies, we also looked at how the author’s gender affected the use of female sources. Again, we saw a difference, with women having a higher percentage of female sources than men, though the difference was not as large quite as large as in the other studies.

In this case in our first six months, females were 28.1 percent of sources in articles written by women and 21.8 percent in those written by men. Articles with a shared byline between a man and women had women as 33 percent of sources. Though differences in sourcing between articles by men and those by women have been consistent across our three studies, these shared bylines have not, which is something we’ll continue to explore.

In review

We’ll still be doing our weekly Gender Checks for the next six months. Be sure to keep an eye out for our other monthly tallies as well as individual Gender Checks. Review past posts on Gender Check findings below:

As a note to our readers, we hope you remember that our study is still young and has some limitations. Further research is still needed. For other data on gender representations in online news and to compare these findings to others’, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category and our “Useful Resources” page.

We’re interested in what you make of the findings. Share your thoughts in the comment section below or email us at genderreport@gmail.com. Stay tuned for posts coming Friday and Saturday that recap all of our findings here at The Gender Report thus far and what we’ve learned from them.