Commentary

Inequality (The Quality Of Being Unequal) In The Press

According to new research conducted by Echo Research, "A Gendered Press," three quarters of all news journalists are men while women make up just a third of journalists covering business and politics. Well, OK, it's staff across the leading 28 newspapers in the UK by circulation size, commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. But how do the women fare on our side of the pond?

The study authors, Nigel Middlemiss and Clare Yorke, find that "... the United Nations has challenged us to improve ‘pathways to decent work for women'. However, when we turn our gaze to journalism, we see stark challenges facing women across the UK... there are currently three male journalists to each female... the inflexible nature of the industry makes career progression challenging... "

The report says that male journalists make up 49% of lifestyle reporters and 70% of arts reporters, while just 4% of sports journalists are women. Looking at the whole newspaper industry, the study found that 30% of the journalists surveyed were women.

Women were also found to be less likely to be in senior newspaper positions, with eight out of the top ten newspapers having almost twice as many male editors as women editors. The study said women were most likely to be editors at:

  • The Sunday Times (40%)
  • The Times (39%)  
  • The Guardian (37%)

Women were least likely to be in top editorial positions at:

  • The Daily Mirror (21%)
  • The Sun (24%)

The study found that The Independent had the lowest proportion of female staff, employing 25% women, followed closely by The Sun (26%) and the Daily Telegraph (26%). The highest proportion of female journalists is still about a third, with The Daily Mail and the Observer both employing 36% women, closely followed by the Daily Express with 35%.

The report concludes by noting that "... the gender imbalance we have uncovered is shocking... "

To read the complete report, including charts and graphs on the findings, please download the PDF file at this address: http://www.echoresearch.com/data/echo_research_a-gendered report 2011.pdf

 

 

1 comment about "Inequality (The Quality Of Being Unequal) In The Press ".
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  1. Dana Todd from SRVR LLC, April 8, 2011 at 8:57 a.m.

    I'm not really surprised, and I'm sure it'd pretty similar in the US if we had commissioned the study. When I was a journalist at several small and midsized papers, there was an astonishing level of chauvinism: at one paper, the only girls in sports were the college-age "sports girls" who called local teams to get scores on Friday nights and entered the data, and were routinely preyed on by the male writers who circled the room like sharks. At another, I was told by my editor that I was going to hell because I believed that women should be allowed to preach at churches. Most of the editorial roles for women were in Home/Lifestyle, a few city editors. Almost no female photographers. Seriously, ridiculous. And, there's very little turnover in top editorial roles so you just have to wait until someone dies.

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About the Author

Jack Loechner is the Editor of The Center for Media Research's daily Research Brief. You can reach him at jack@mediapost.com.