Fewer than one in five Today guests or reporters are women
Monday, 01 October 2012 10:49
BBC director general George Entwistle has called for the station's early morning on-air gender imbalance to change
from: The Guardian,
by Dan Sabbagh, John Plunkett and Ami Sedghi
Fewer than one in five people appearing on Radio 4's Today programme are women – a proportion that underlines why this month new BBC director general George Entwistle used his first week in the job to call for the station's early morning on-air gender imbalance to change.
An average of 18.5% of reporters and guests appearing on Today were female, according to Guardian research, as measured over four weeks in June and July. That is only up marginally from the 16.6% recorded in a similar period in 2011, the first time the gender divide was analysed.
Journalism can be a very dangerous job, in particular for reporters who expose injustices in hostile, corrupt and violent environments and in war zones. In addition to the different forms of violence against journalists, both men and women, and obstacles to their work, including threats, murder, confiscation of material, deportation, arrests and intimidation, female journalists face certain gendered risks within this male dominated profession.
by: Janine Jackson Publisher: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Inc. (FAIR)
Recent years have seen much rallying around “traditional” journalism in the face of its supposedly imminent demise, including the mythologizing of pre-Internet news media as a force of social cohesion.
por Maximiliano Dueñas Guzmán, coordinador del GMMP en la région Caribé
“Debemos crear medios de comunicación que alientan al diálogo y al debate: medios que favorezcan a las mujeres y la creatividad popular: medios que reafirmen la sabiduría y los conocimientos de las mujeres y que hagan de las personas sujetos y no objetos o blancos de los medios”. Esta es una de las afirmaciones del Encuentro de Bangkok (Tailandia) 1994, tal vez una de las reuniones mundiales más célebres entre las personas que promueven la democratización de la comunicación. Fue en ese encuentro, que reunió más de 400 personas de 80 países, que se propuso la creación de un Proyecto Mundial de Monitoreo de Medios (GMMP por sus siglas en inglés) para documentar la representación de la mujer en los medios de comunicación. En los inicios del 1995, se escogió el 18 de enero para realizar el primer monitoreo mundial de medios. Los resultados de ese estudio influyeron la Cuarta Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer, actividad de la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU) celebrada en Beijing en 1995, ya que ahí se logró la aprobación de dos objetivos relacionados con la mujer y los medios de comunicación: el aumento en el acceso y participación de la mujer en los medios, y, segundo, la promoción de una representación no estereotipada de la mujer en los medios de comunicación.
An article by E. J. Graff, published in American Prospect online magazine on 29 February 2012.
"...the news purports to be objective, to tell it like it is. The media help create our image of the world, our internal picture of what’s normal and true. And when the news is being written by men about men, a significant part of reality is missing from view."
Article by Tom Cole published on www.radiotimes.com on 9 February 2012.
"The BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson, has admitted that older women are under-represented on its TV channels and pledged that the corporation will seek to rectify the situation in the future.
He also said that Miriam O’Reilly’s age discrimination lawsuit had been an “important wake-up call” for the BBC."
""The media creates, reflects and enforces attitudes in society. Those who work in the media should be conscious of this and should actively seek not to reproduce attitudes which condone violence against women or girls," said Marai Larasi from End Violence Against Women, a coalition of 40 women's organisations.
Representatives of the women's groups Equality Now, Eaves, Object and End Violence Against Women called on Lord Justice Leveson to ban highly sexualised images in newspapers, which they argued would not be broadcast pre-watershed on television."
Response to women's under-representation in British broadcasting
Published in The Guardian (online) on 25 January 2012.
"The broadcasting minister, Ed Vaizey, has undertaken to set up a meeting between Nadine Dorries and BBC director general Mark Thompson to discuss the under-representation of women at the corporation, both on and off air".
"In a typical month,78% of newspaper articles are written by men, 72% of Question Time contributors are men and 84% of reporters and guests on Radio 4's Today show are men. Where are all the women?"
