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Culture February 18, 2017
Between Hillary Clinton running for president and women marching all over the world, you might think that news outlets are finally highlighting accomplished women in the media, as ENTITY already does. But you would be wrong.
In fact, in 2015, women made up only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news around the world, according to a report by The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). Specifically in the U.S., the numbers aren’t much better: even when articles are partly or completely written by women, a 2012 study found that an average of 1.1 men and 0.8 women were cited as sources.
Why are women being cut out of the picture, specifically in the U.S.? What changes need to be made for women’s names – and accomplishments – to receive the credit they deserve? And will we be seeing an increase in coverage of women in the media anytime soon? ENTITY recently sat down with Dr. Deborah Kolb, leadership expert and author of seven books including “Negotiating at Work,” to discuss the five biggest reasons women are still underrepresented in the media.
First off, ditch everything you ever thought about “liberal” news outlets – because they don’t help women’s media image anymore than any other news organization.
In fact, Eran Shor discovered that, contrary to other studies, neither a newspaper’s liberal or conservative slant nor the number of female vs. male editors editors influenced the coverage of women. In other words, if you’ve been reading a liberal newspaper run by women out of hopes that it will reference and report more on women, you’re out of luck.
So if its not the kind of newspaper or editor that determines the coverage of women in the media, what does? Unfortunately, we may have our own culture to blame.
In 2014, 61 percent of guest experts on Sunday morning political talk shows were white men while 20 percent were white women, 14 percent were non-white men, and the remaining guests – a whopping 5 percent – were non-white women. These statistics may sound depressing, but Dr. Deborah Kolb’s reasoning for them is even more so: “Our cultural definition of leadership and authority is masculine—and so women seem less authoritative,” she says. “Women have to do more to be seen as credible. This occurs in research and promotions as well. It also may be that men are represented in much higher numbers in fields that people are quoting as authorities, like military and finance.”
You might be the most qualified expert on the topic at hand…but, if you’re a woman, your credentials often aren’t enough, You also have to prove you’re accomplished enough to roll with the big boys.
Perhaps the biggest barrier preventing us from seeing more women in the media is power.
Eran Shor argues that the media focuses on covering a small group of elites. Therefore, as long as men continue to dominate higher-level occupations – like CEOs, directors, producers and congressmen – the media will keep mentioning male names three to five times more often than female names.
Shor’s research makes it impossible not to wonder: what is keeping women from positions of power – and also out of the public eye? Dr. Kolb mainly blames the “flexibility bias” and the “invisible work” women are expected to do along with their day jobs. “Managing work and personal life falls more to women, and so well-educated senior women are more likely to pull back,” she explains. “There’s also what Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant called ‘Madame CEO get me a coffee,’ or work that takes time but is not related to one’s real job…or networking.”
When it comes to increasing coverage of women in the media, there seems to be a domino effect: only once women crash the glass ceiling of positions in power can they crash the glass ceiling of newspaper coverage.
So what’s the big deal if we see more mentions of Joe than Cassidy while reading our morning newspaper, watching the evening news or scanning our favorite magazines? According to Dr. Kolb, “Research shows that the more women there are in leadership roles, the more women and girls aspire to those roles and the more they see that there are many ways to be a woman leader.”
Not only that, but the more men dominate the media, the less people will expect to see women at all. “The resulting dominance of men as subjects of public and dinner-table conversation may reinforce and normalize in the minds of audiences the notion that power and newsworthiness are something men have,” points out Eran Shor.
In fact, when comparing the media coverage of men and women in 1983 and 2008, the charts look alarmingly similar.
And if women keep being blocked from high status jobs and therefore from media references, I’m betting a chart analyzing 2017 will be yet another doppelganger.
But is there any hope for seeing more expert women in the media? And could Donald Trump be any help? To put it simply: maybe.
“Donald Trump appointed two men [Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and EY CEO Mark Weinberger] to be the leaders of women in the workforce. Neither runs companies with good track records of women in leadership and I think the cabinet appointments speak to the masculine bias of the administration,” says Dr. Kolb. However, Trump may be inadvertently helping women’s cause because of the public outcry he’s creating, with Dr. Kolb pointing out: “I think the women’s march and the resistance are showcasing women, and I think that women seem to be energized to enter politics at the local level—so perhaps there is some hope.”
Because, the truth is, we can’t improve female representation in the media without changing the underlying barriers. We don’t just want women in news articles or on talk shows; we want women as CEOs and renowned experts in the business field.
It’s time for women to start receiving the media attention and recognition they deserve…and it starts by giving women power in the first place.
