“Women, it seems, have come far only if you count progress in inches,” said Kristin Gilger, the associate dean at ASU’s Cronkite School.
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From newsrooms to films and everything in between, there's an obvious component missing in nearly every media industry: women aren't being equally represented in comparison to their male counterparts.
According to a new report from the Women's Media Center, women are both under and misrepresented in the media. Unsurprisingly, white men still dominate fields such as sports journalism, op-ed sections, and Sunday talk shows. The findings in the WMC's 2014 Status of Women in U.S. Media report shows that the U.S. media clearly has a long way to go in fairly and accurately representing women.
"The media is failing women across the board," Julie Burton, president of the Women's Media Center, said in a press release. "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 roadmap 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."
Not much has changed from last year's report — if anything, some areas have seemingly gotten worse. Here are some of the noteworthy findings from the 2014 Status of Women in U.S. Media report:
Newsroom staffing decreased by 6.4% from 2011 to 2012, and female staffers remained at 36%.
That figure has pretty much stayed the same since 1999. The number of women of color in newsrooms also decreased overall: there was a 6% drop in multi-racial women from 2012 to 2013, a 2% decrease in Latina woman from 2007, a 3% drop in women of Asian descent from 2006, a fall in 3% for black women since 2010, and a 13% decrease in Native American women from the year 2000.
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Men were used more often as sources in stories than women.
Men were quoted 3.4 more times than women in front page stories in the New York Times over a two-month period in 2013. But stories written by women had better gender representation.
Women's Media Center
