GOOD Lifestyle Editor Amanda Hess' blog post Boys Will Hire Boys: The Media Is Male and Getting Maler is doing the rounds this morning, and since I haven't posted in about five months but do actually have some thoughts on this, I figured why not.
My j-school graduating class was made up overwhelmingly of women. Hess' post says 73% of journalism and mass communications grads are female; while, four years later, I can't remember the exact numbers for my class, I'd say 73% sounds about right, if not actually a bit lower, for my class.
But the first stat I take issue with is this: "Women's representation in sports news hasn't budged since 2008 (just 11 percent of editors, 10 percent of columnists, and 7 percent of reporters are women)." Of all of the women in my graduating class, I knew of one who had any interest in sports reporting (though it wasn't her primary goal), and she had a very successful internship and later job doing ice hockey player interviews for a big station. While I'm absolutely sure there are women out there who want to become sports reporters and are held back by the fact that they're female and are thus assumed to know less than their male counterparts, I also think it's ridiculous to pretend like we should expect gender parity in sports reporting. The vast majority of female journalists are not trying to become sports reporters, and it's right that the makeup of that particular part of the industry should reflect that. Yes, we should work toward ensuring that women who do want to get into sports reporting have the opportunities and are not turned away simply because they're women, but misleading, pearl-clutching statistics implying it should be 50/50 are not really the way to go.
As to the main issue of a male-dominated industry perpetuating itself by mostly hiring males, I think it's worth delving a bit deeper into the statistics. While I'm sure the "male workforces mean male networks and male job candidates and male hiring metrics and stories about men" dynamic that Hess cites does indeed account for some of the problem, I'm not sure it's all there is to it.
Yes, 73% of graduates are female now, but this hasn't always been the case. This suggests that perhaps a skewed male-female ratio is to be expected in upper management positions, where the people with the most experience may be more likely to be male, because 30 years ago when they got into the industry, they weren't in the minority. The Women's Media Center report says the percentage of women in newspaper jobs has increased from 37% in 1999 and 2010 to 40.5% in 2011, suggesting that new hires at newspapers are more likely to be female. Again, considering that women haven't always been the 73% majority, it makes sense that women should start to make gains in hiring, until at some point there should be parity and then probably tip over into female majorities as considerably less men are graduating from journalism and communications courses and applying for jobs.
As well, the report says, "Women journalism and mass communication graduates have consistently had slightly higher (2-6%) full-time employment rates than their male counterparts. Becker et al. (2010) attribute this to women being more likely to specialize in advertising and public relations, which offer more full-time jobs than other occupations in the field." This means that the 73% statistic is actually quite misleading in terms of trying to figure out how the representation of women in newsrooms should be working out. Of those 73% of female graduates, how many are actually trying to move into news journalism and how many are specialising in PR and advertising, where they are more likely to find jobs?
I've had a bit of personal experience in hiring (generally) new graduates for an entry-level online news-related role. While my office has fashion and entertainment arms that are dominated by women, I am the only woman on our (admittedly small) news team. While the vast majority of applicants for our team are women, reflecting the fact that there are more female graduates, the majority of people I shortlisted and interviewed were male. This is because, for the most part, men's job applications tended to come across as being more interested in hard news, politics, and the other issues listed in the job ad, while women's applications tended to focus on social affairs, feature writing, and entertainment interests. And while there is all kinds of debate as to why this might be the case, the fact remains that when it comes to hiring decisions, for me, in both cases, the best person for the job was a man. Obviously this is simply one or two instances out of thousands worldwide, but I can't help but wonder to what extent my experience is representative of those hiring elsewhere in the news industry.
The report also says 40% of the television labour force are women, including 56.8% of news anchors. "While women are the minority for 10 of 18 positions, they represent about half of assistant news directors and assignment editors, and the majority for six key positions, including executive producers, producers, news reporters, writers, anchors, and assistants. Women are most underrepresented among news photographers, sports anchors, and sports reporters." Female prominence or parity in key positions in TV suggests that women in TV are not subject to the "chronic underrepresentation" that Hess discusses for other mediums.
Hess cites the fact that women are the subject of only 24% of news stories, but doesn't mention the reasoning cited in the report as given by the NPR Ombudsman: "Admittedly, the relative lack of female voices reflects the broader world. The fact remains that even in the fifth decade after the feminist revolution, men are still largely in charge in government at all levels, in corporations and nearly all other aspects of society. That means, by default, there are going to be more male than female news sources." While media could definitely do better to seek out female commentators on issues, the issue of who makes news is a larger societal problem and not simply down to underrepresentation in media.
There are absolutely issues in the Women's Media Center report that need to be addressed. But I don't think it's particularly helpful for a blogpost to go viral that uses misleading simplifications of statistics and doesn't seem to advocate delving any deeper into the problems and looking for solutions, but says, "About half the time, we should be hiring the best woman for the job. If we don't, we're part of the problem. So hire women. Write about them. Give them lines. Invite them onto your shows. Just do it, and don't stop." as if it's as simple as that.
