FY 2001-2002 Annual Report
Cracking the Glass Ceiling with Leadership Training

Cracking the Glass Ceiling with Leadership Training

"I think we, as women, need to find the proper solutions so that we maintain, so that we remain active, do what we love and raise our kids in a way so that they can appreciate who we are as individuals."

A new series of IWMF workshops for women journalists in the U.S. media was designed to help women journalists crack the glass ceiling by learning to become leaders in their newsrooms. The workshops cover conflict resolution, career mapping, and how to communicate with peers, supervisors and staff.

Another essential skill taught in the workshops is risk taking -- how to handle it and how to transform it into an opportunity.

Just three weeks after attending the first workshop in the series in New York, Tanisha Mallet was confronted with a test of her new risk-taking skills. Mallett, a reporter for WTEN-TV in Albany, New York, had been at her station only four months when she had the opportunity to snag an exclusive story.

First, however, she had to convince her news director that the story was so good that it warranted sending her with a camera crew to camp out for an interview. She was nervous, but took the idea to her news director and got the go-ahead.

"I've always been pretty humble," says Mallett. She adds that she is learning to be more assertive. "I was nervous about going to my news director, but I decided to take the shot." And her risk-taking paid off.

All the skills taught in the workshops boil down to good communication, says Cheryl Epps, a professional trainer who conducted them. "The greatest leadership challenge facing all people, including women journalists, is managing the interpersonal dynamics of the leadership function," says Epps. "The inability to handle these relationships dooms most managers and leaders."

The workshops also provide women journalists with an opportunity to develop strategies to rise to the top in the media, which continues to be one of the major leadership obstacles for women journalists. According to the Women and Minorities Survey conducted in the United States in 2001 by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, women account for only 24 percent of television news directors and 20 percent of radio news directors. Print journalists fare slightly better. Women are 34 percent of newsroom supervisors, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2002 survey.

Participants also discussed personal career challenges, particularly how to balance work with marriage or children. In an IWMF survey taken in 2000 among women journalists from 44 countries, 64 percent of those who responded said that balancing work and family is the top obstacle they face.

"I think for women it's all or nothing," says Deborah Feyerick, a correspondent for CNN in New York City. "It's either you keep continuing to do what you did, putting in the kind of hours you did, or you just quit and you raise your kid. So, I think we, as women, need to find the proper solutions so that we maintain, so that we remain active, do what we love and raise our kids in a way so that they can appreciate who we are as individuals."

Women Reaching for the Top: Initiatives for Media Leaderhip was funded by the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the Philip L. Graham Fund, with additional support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, JPMorgan Chase, Knight Ridder, The Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle. Workshops were held in 2002 in New York City, Miami, San Francisco and Washington, DC. The program will continue in 2003.

A leadership workshop was also held for minority women journalists in Los Angeles. This workshop was funded by Wells Fargo and hosted by Univision, the Spanish-language broadcasting company.