Women’s Media Center Report Finds Women Still Underrepresented, Misrepresented in U.S. Media
Thursday, March 20th, 2014
The U.S. media have exceedingly more distance to travel on the road to gender-blind parity, according to a report released today from the Women’s Media Center.
While noting barriers broken by top women in media like Shonda Rhimes, creator and executive producer and Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, WMC’s 2014 Status of Women in U.S. Media Report notes a troubling status quo and, in some places, a slipping back in time.
Sports news coverage remains overwhelmingly white and male, even as women’s sports and women sports fans are surging, the report says. Moreover, women of color — who are spotlighted in this report for the first time —are among those who have lost ground in recent years.
“The media is failing women across the board,” said Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center. “The Women’s Media Center produces the annual Status of Women in U.S. Media Report to provide an overview of the role of women in media and thereby in society. It is a road map for where we are as a society and where we need to go for women to achieve an equal voice and equal participation. The numbers tell a clear story for the need for change on every media platform.”
WMC released the report today just before an afternoon panel discussion on “Women, Media and Leadership,” being held in conjunction with Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Karen Finney, host of MSNBC’s “Disrupt with Karen Finney” is moderating the panel. Panelists will discuss the report and examine the gender disparities, challenges and opportunities for making women more visible and powerful in media.
Using an avalanche of new surveys, studies and reports, the Women’s Media Center report examines the representation of women in newspapers, online-only news sites, television, radio, social media, video games, film and television, sports news, newsmakers and corporate/technology leadership.
Click here to download the report.
Here are highlights from the 2014 report:
As newsroom staffing declined 6.4 percent from 2011 to 2012, the overall tally of women staffers continued to hover at 36 percent, a figure largely unchanged since 1999. Nevertheless, the count for women of color continued its more extreme fluctuations.
The number of women in radio news jumped 8 percent from 2012 to 2013, narrowing one of the historically widest gender gaps in the news industry. However, elsewhere in broadcast news, there were, as examples, losses in female on-air talent and broadcast managers.
White men continued to dominate the ranks of Sunday morning news talk show guests, except on a single MSNBC show with a black female host.
Two women—1.09 percent—were among the 183 sports talk radio hosts on Talkers magazine’s “Heavy Hundred” list. The Top Ten among Talker’s news talk show “Heavy Hundred” included no women.
More than 150 print publications and websites covering sports—an arena whose editors are 90 percent white and 90 percent male—were slammed with an “F” in an Associated Press Sports Editors-commissioned study.
Over a five-year period ending in 2012, the 500 top-grossing movies had 565 directors, 33 of whom were black and two of that 33 were black women.
Women represent 28.8 percent of speaking characters in the top-grossing films in 2012.
Only six percent of the top 100 films in 2012 hired a balanced cast of women and men.
For production of the 250 top-grossing domestically made films of 2013, women accounted for 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors, slightly lower than the 2012 and 1998 figures.
According to a two-month snapshot in 2013, men wrote 82 percent of all film reviews.
Women snared 43 percent of speaking parts in prime-time TV, according to the latest study, up from 41 percent previously. Those women, however, tended to be much younger than their male acting counterparts.
More white women but fewer women of color have been directing prime-time TV shows but the overall numbers for women has remained virtually unchanged.
The report was researched and written for the Women’s Media Center by Katti Gray, veteran journalist and custom content producer. Cindy Royal, Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University in San Marcos reviewed it. Cristal Williams Chancellor, media relations manager of The Women’s Media Center and senior producer for Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan, edited the report.
For more information go to http://www.womensmediacenter.com/pages/2014-statistics
