Volume 38, No. 1, Winter 2010

Status Report: Global Research on Women in the News Media

Carolyn Byerly, an associate professor at Howard University and a MRTW Supporting Subscriber, is leading the important study sponsored by the International Women’s Media Foundation that is examining the activity of women in the news media worldwide. MRTW asked her for a status report, which she graciously provided:

“The Global Report study has completed the data collection and processing, and we are now analyzing and writing up the findings. IWMF plans to release some of the findings in Fall 2010 (online and downloadable), and the final report in Spring 2011, in connection with its 20th anniversary events.

“The study includes 518 news organizations (newspapers, radio and TV) in 60 nations. The study was accomplished with a small staff that included me (the investigator), two part-time assistants, and a statistician, as well as 100+ researchers who served as coordinators in their regions and/or as researchers who gathered the data in face-to-face interviews. The project was also greatly assisted, especially in the planning stage, by a five-member advisory committee, and by IWMF's fundraising, financial management, clerical, and professional staff during the length of the project.

“It has been a huge undertaking but one that will yield data that have been needed for a very long time. IWMF plans to replicate the study every 3-5 years, so that, over time, there will be longitudinal data to allow us to track women's progress (or not) in the news profession.”

Grammatical Gender Bedevils Political Discourse in Europe

While some U.S. politicians plead for comity and civility in what has become polarized public life and raucous discourse, European nations such as Italy and Spain are struggling with the very languages they use. Because they have masculine and feminine forms in their languages, and tradition as well as grammar influence the way language is used, these countries are finding that language forms can make it easy to offend women ascending the ladder of power.

In a fascinating piece for Inter Press Service (“Rejecting the Derogatory 'Feminine,’” published Dec. 26, 2009), Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli explain how linguistic discrimination has become a bigger issue as women have attained high office and influence larger and larger areas of the public sphere.

Read Gutierrez and Boselli’s full article at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49824.

Google Search Prompts: Perpetuating Sex Stereotyping?

What prompts complete your search when you google “How can I get my boyfriend to….?”

According to Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (expanded edition, Harper, 2009), who typed those words in to see what options Google would present to the searcher, the results were mostly about emotional aspects of the relationship:

To propose
To love me again
To be more romantic
To be more affectionate
To stop drinking

When the question is, “How can I get my girlfriend to….?”, the prompts are less about emotion and more about sex and sexiness, i.e.,

To give me head
To sleep with me
To lose weight
To kiss me

With Google saying it organizes these suggested prompts by how often computer users actually ask these questions, we can see that men are still from Mars and women from Venus – and Google’s search engine, in its own arbitrary way, underscores differences in male and female attitudes toward their romantic relationships, and now exhibits those differences prominently as a search tool convenience.

AEJMC Online Chat Explores Female Journalists’ Disenchantment

In the Fall 2009 issue of MRTW, we reported on Scott Reinardy’s research on women in newspaper journalism. On Jan. 21, 2010, Reinardy, a University of Kansas professor, led on online discussion about his research with a panel of journalists and journalism educators and others who joined in the discussion, including MRTW Editor Sheila Gibbons.

Reinardy’s research showed that 62 percent of women working in newspaper newsrooms have some intention of leaving journalism, citing exhaustion and cynicism, two components that can lead to burnout. Of women 27 and younger, more than 74 percent answered “yes” or “don’t know” to the intention-to-leave question.

The full discussion is archived at http://aejmc.org/topics/2010/01/live-chat-replay-women-in-the-newsroom/

Research in Depth: Women’s Magazines After The Feminine Mystique

Research in Depth: Evolution of a Broadcast Feminist – Alison Owings

Commentary: Football Championships and Reproductive Choice

Plus News Briefs!

Media Report to Women has hard copies of back issues dating to its founding in 1972. Indispensable for research!