Leading in a Different Language: Will Women Change the News Media?
Different Perspectives

A majority of the women journalists who responded to an informal IWMF survey conducted prior to the May 2000 gathering of women media leaders in Washington, DC think the news would be different if more women held leadership positions in media companies.

A significant majority (92 percent) of respondents to the survey said that women bring a different, more human perspective to the news, at least some of the time. In addition, some 60 percent of respondents to a 1997 IWMF survey said that women have different approaches to covering international news, both in the way they select topics and the angles from which they choose to cover those topics.

This supports findings from a 1995 IWMF report in which women journalists said that once greater equality for women is reached in the media and in society as a whole, women will demand to see and hear various images of themselves and issues of importance to them. The journalists also agreed that if women held higher positions in the media portrayals of women in the media would change for the better.

News with a Human Dimension

Journalists completing the 2000 IWMF survey felt strongly that women bring a more human dimension to the news. A senior editor from the Philippines commented, "Men tend to concentrate on quotes from government officials and focus on conflicts, while women tend to look at impact on the greatest number of people or sectors."

"The biggest difference between men and women as editors and journalists is that women seem to consider the reader."
Ruthie Blum, Editor, Jerusalem Post Magazine, Israel

At the IWMF gathering in May, Cynthia Samuels, a former senior editor with National Public Radio in the United States, noted that in the last 20 years, since women started making strides in the U.S. media, there are more "issues that are covered more [frequently] and better and we shouldn't underestimate the impact." Responding to the IWMF survey, an associate editor in the United States echoed her view. "Women have changed the definition of news to the extent that news once thought of as 'women's news,' [topics] such as health, family issues, childcare, domestic violence, education, child abuse and the like, are now considered of general interest to all readers," she wrote.

Ruthie Blum, editor of The Jerusalem Post Magazine in Israel, told colleagues at the IWMF conference in May that she finds "the biggest difference between men and women as editors and journalists is that women seem to consider the reader." She feels that men think about what would impress colleagues or influential politicians, rather than thinking about what the average reader or viewer wants.

An editor from Russia agreed, explaining that it has only been since the era of perestroika and glasnost that women have emerged as war correspondents. The change in reports from the field was instantly noticeable, she said, and had a remarkable impact on politicians, editors, and the public. "Women showed not only the quantity of people killed," but the impact on civilians caught in the battlegrounds.

Still, pointing out female differences in a male dominated culture could be risky, cautions Pat Mitchell, the first female president of the Public Broadcasting System in the United States. "Pointing to our differences could be tantamount to pointing to our inequities and inequalities," she told delegates to the IWMF conference in May.

Portrayal of Women

In addition to a different approach to reporting the news, women decision-makers may also change the rate at which women appear as subjects of the news and how they are portrayed by the media.

A recent report by the World Association for Christian Communication found that women were only 18 percent of people interviewed for stories around the world. This is just a slight increase over 1995 results, when women were 17 percent of interview subjects. Even more telling, current figures show that women are the focus in only 7 percent of stories on politics and government, as compared to 26 percent in entertainment and the arts.

Responding to a 1995 IWMF survey, 72 percent of women journalists polled said that women are misrepresented in the news media. Some 73 percent said that women leaders are simply disregarded in the news media. A U.S.-based journalist explained the reason for this: "There is so little coverage of women outside of sensationalism," she said. "The media often disregard women as leaders and portray women as individuals, not groups; victims, not heroines; sexual figures, not thinkers!"

A 1997 survey of Romanian newspapers by The Policy Project, a Washington, DC-based program of The Futures Group International that focuses on reproductive health, found that women are often portrayed in a sexual manner, including in serious news stories. "There is even sexist sensationalism in the hard news," a Romanian journalism trainer told an IWMF seminar in 1999, referring to her country's media. "As an example, a lawyer who won an important case would be featured as a woman who just won a case instead of a lawyer, as if to say, 'Isn't that curious? A successful woman.' It confirms the audience's stereotypes."

Speaking at the IWMF conference in May 2000, Katie Breen, international editor of Marie Claire, said the French Association of Women Journalists found in a recent survey that in the French media "women are portrayed much more often than men as victims rather than doers." Breen also reported that women "are used much more often [than men] as decorative objects in photos."

And a 1998 report on public television programs done by the Public Broadcasting System in the United States found that women were just 22 percent of sources in the programs reviewed. In addition, women routinely appeared as speakers on social issues, and were most absent from hard news stories on politics, the economy or finance. These figures led PBS to conclude that "by concentrating the voices of women…into social issues, [television producers] suggest that women have a narrower range of expertise than men do."

Does the News Have Gender?

Many women journalists assert that the news is not defined by gender. "The news is the news," they say, whether it is reported by a woman or a man. They argue that standards of accuracy, fairness and ethics apply equally to all journalists, regardless of gender.

But could women journalists simply be taking their lead from male journalists who have set the atmosphere and standards of behavior in newsrooms? One editor from the United States thinks so. "Often, women are conditioned to respond to news in a 'male' pattern. It's how many of us avoid being labeled 'too soft' and get the positions we have," she said. Women who want to cover politics and economics say they must follow the avenues set by their male colleagues or risk being assigned to soft news.

Still, the majority of women journalists say that their presence in newsrooms makes a difference in how news is selected and how it is presented.