Gender Balance Lacking in Media Management, Corporate Boards

Media, high-tech and telecommunications companies are reinventing their businesses daily, but the gender makeup of their top officers and boardrooms is not keeping pace, according to a report released in Washington in March. Women constitute only 13 percent of the top executives and 9 percent of the boards of directors of the nation's leading media, telecom and e-commerce companies, according to research by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Very few women have titles such as chairman, chief executive officer or president, the study said.

Panel Discussion: Have the Media Killed Feminism? Depends on Whom You Ask…

The American University School of Communication in Washington organized a panel discussion in December at which participants were invited to debate the media's role in shaping attitudes about feminism. "The American Forum: Have the Media Killed Feminism?" was moderated by Iris Krasnow, AU communication professor.

The participants were Bonnie Erbe, host of public television's "To The Contrary"; Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women; and Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? This issue of Media Report to Women contains a transcript of the lively, sometimes contentious, panel discussion.

Indian Women Journalists Meet, Frame Beginnings of Network

A national network of women in journalism is gradually emerging in India, writes journalist and media researcher Ammu Joseph, whose summary of two key meetings appears in this issue of Media Report to Women. Both workshops established the fact that many women in different parts of the country, including metropolitan cities, are still struggling to establish their position and secure their rights as media professionals. Workshop discussions spotlighted "the sense of unreality among journalists in the metro-based English media," as one participant put it, about the feminization/humanization of the media in recent times, based on their own experiences and/or those of others in their immediate environment. They underscored the need for collectives and networks of women journalists at different levels to fulfill a variety of needs and address a number of concerns, among them job and salary discrimination and sexual harassment. The process of building these collectives and eventually forming a multi-layered network seems now to be under way, slowly perhaps but surely.

IWMF Announces Awards To Courageous Journalists

The International Women's Media Foundation has announced that women journalists from Colombia, Spain and Sudan will receive 2001 Courage in Journalism Awards in recognition of their pursuit of integrity in journalism, despite assaults, death threats and risks to their livelihoods and lives. They are:

• Jineth Bedoya Lima, a 27-year-old reporter for El Espectador in Bogota, Colombia, who covers the conflict between the government and paramilitary groups

• Carmen Gurruchaga, who covers the Basque separatist movement for the Madrid-based daily, El Mundo.

• Amal Abbas, who is the only female editor in chief of a publication in Sudan. Her newspaper, Al-Rai Al-Akher, is one of the leading independent dailies in the country.

The IWMF also announced that Colleen "Koky" Dishon has been awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2001. Dishon, an innovator who helped revolutionize feature coverage in American newspapers, was the first woman to appear on the masthead of the Chicago Tribune.

Plus News Briefs, People, Books and Commentary.

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