Women in Journalism

Journalism seems as though it would be a relatively gender-neutral profession. It doesn't seem to have a gender-specific prototype like other jobs do. Nonetheless, a post by Editors Weblog indicates that 3/4 of U.K. news journalists are men, and only 1/3 of business/political journalists are women. The number of women in high editor positions is also low. And in the U.S., women make up 37% of traditional print journalists. It's hard to think of a source of this bias in the industry. While long ago female writers were not respected, that was at a time when women were discriminated from all sorts of industries. In today's society, though gender bias has not been completely abandoned, it's much less of an issue. Journalism doesn't seem to be a profession that would have a gender attached to it the way surgeons may be assumed to be male or receptionists or secretaries may be assumed to be female. Why would there be such a small proportion of women in the journalism industry? It doesn't seem like there is a shortage of women interested in journalism. Are companies being discriminatory in their hiring practices? For the sake of my future career, I sure hope not!

Meanwhile, Tina Brown, the new and first ever female editor of Newsweek, is launching a premiere issue that is geared heavily toward female readers. Hillary Clinton is featured on the cover for a story about Clinton's push to give women a more prominent stance in the world order. There are also two other stories about the power of women. It's interesting to me that the first ever female editor of such a prominent news magazine would release such a blatantly feminist-- or at least female-oriented-- issue for her very first endeavor. Of course, I've never been a pioneer in the journalism industry like Brown has, but I think if I were in her position, I would want to prove to the world that women can provide quality, unbiased news just as well as men can. Brown says she hopes to attract more female readers, but I think there are more subtle ways to accomplish that than by saturating the news magazine with an above average proportion of female-oriented content. I think Brown should have spread out the stories about women into upcoming issues because none of them seems to be particularly urgent.

It's interesting to see if women will hold more prominent roles in the journalism industry as time goes on. There's lots of room for innovation and new ideas in the industry; hopefully women will take advantage of new opportunities in order to make the numbers of men and women slightly more even. And, hopefully women will be wise with their new positions.