Women Journalists' Survey: Not Enough Accomplished for Equality

The International Federation of Journalists' (http://www.ifj.org) survey of women journalists, released with a booklet of essays by selected women journalists, says, "Women are still a long way from the commanding heights of equality with men, who dominate the executive and managerial class of modern media." Some key findings of the survey, for which responses were received from 39 countries:

• The number of women journalists is on the rise in most countries surveyed.

• The number of women in decision-making positions is shockingly low.

• Most women journalists work for newspapers.

• Equal pay for equal work remains a problem.

• Half of the unions surveyed said that portrayal of women was an issue and one being discussed within the union.

Radio Programmers Struggle with Ways to Attract, Keep Women Listeners

A steady decline in U. S. women radio listeners since 1993 has prompted programmers to find out what women want from radio. The answers: Music in formats they favor and news and information.

What do they dislike? Offensive content; too many commercials; contests; rude, obnoxious announcers and talk-show hosts. Women respondents to an Arbitron/Joint Communications survey said radio contained "too much people-bashing" and crude, lewd content. The dislike of gross content was expressed by young women 18-24 as often as women who are likely to be listening to the radio with their children.

War Is Hell: How Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Affects Women Journalists

The Freedom Forum European Centre in London (scheduled to close at the end of 2001) hosted a discussion on the experiences of journalists who cover war and violent conflict. The discussion was stimulated by a study conducted by Anthony Feinstein of the Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, an affiliate of the University of Toronto. Feinstein found that:

• Eighty percent of correspondents covering these conflicts are male.

• More than half are single or divorced, which contrasts highly with the general population in Canada, for example, where about 85% of females around the age of 40, and 85% of the males, are married.

• Correspondents in this group drank alcohol at higher levels than a control group of journalists. The males drink about twice as much as men in the control group, but the women war correspondents drank five times as much as the women journalists in the control group. Use of marijuana was about the same across both groups.

• From a psychological perspective, women war correspondents did remarkably well, Feinstein said. Their scores for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression were no worse than for their male counterparts. This is noteworthy, he said: Women historically always have higher depression and post-traumatic stress disorder scores, even in the general population.

Feinstein can be reached at ant.feinstein@utoronto.ca.

Female Bylines in Sept. 11 Aftermath Few and Far Between

Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there has been a great deal of discussion on how quickly the news analysis and the reporting of events came to be dominated by men. One perspective was offered by Madeleine Bunting, writing in England's The Guardian on Sept. 20. Her analysis of five British daily newspapers confirmed the decline in contributions from women.

"The power structure is exposed at such times, as the token women slide into the background, leaving war to men," Bunting wrote. "Condoleeza Rice seems to be the one exception. Virtually the only female faces in the media at the moment are the victims; women are cast as passive." (http://www.guardian.co.uk)

The Pink Ghetto: Why Women's Magazines Get No Respect

Selected excerpts from a panel discussion of women's magazine editors sponsored by MediaBistro (http://www.mediabistro.com), a networking site for those who create or work with media content.

Panel Discussion Excerpts: American Families in the Media

"The Simpsons are dysfunctional," said Time columnist and NPR commentator Amy Dickinson at an American University discussion, "but they're dysfunctional in ways that are familiar."

The discussants talked about stereotyping; terms in public discourse that suggest approval or disapproval of family behavior ("latchkey kids," "broken home") - phrases that, when repeated by reporters, influence attitudes; criticism of "parenting" magazines; acceptance of non-traditional family units.

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