Women in The Media: Underrepresentation and Marginalization
Over the last century, the influence exerted by the media in shaping our lives has become remarkable. “We are witnessing a major cultural revolution that is having an incredible impact on our society.” Mass media express and influence opinions, behaviors and social norms, contributing to the increase or decrease in knowledge, culture and civilization. This is true as well for the way media reinforce some stereotypes on women, given that women in the media are often sexualized, they talk less than men and are less likely to play roles as leaders or professionals than men.
In the entertainment industry too, the role that women play is hotly debated: There is unfair bias concerning the value of men and women working in this field, influencing the opportunities they receive and the wages.
The Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in 1995 in Beijing, stressed the importance of the advancement of women in some critical spheres, including the media, promoting a fair stereotype-free image of women in the media, as well as facilitating women's access to and participation in all means of communication. However, professional gender inequalities and stereotypical media representations of women persist. What is going on in the U.S.? The research conducted by Women’s Media Center provides a detailed overview of the situation. The Women’s Media Center (WMC) is “a progressive, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to raise the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media and, thereby, ensuring that their stories get told and their voices are heard.”
In the U.S. in 2017 men produced 62.3% of news reports while women produced 37.7%. Men still dominate media across all platforms: television, newspapers, online and wires. “Women are not equal partners in telling the story, nor are they equal partners in sourcing and interpreting what and who is important in the story.” Even if TV news saw a record rise in minority female news directors and the overall minority workforce, employees in this sector are still far from reflecting the nation’s demographic profile. The percentage of female radio and TV news directors rose to 33.1% in 2015. Men mainly cover sports, crime and justice issues, while women are more likely to report on lifestyle, health and education.
What about Italy? In Italy too, men still occupy the largest proportion of positions in the media. Monitoring both traditional (offline) and online media in Italy for one day, the Global Media Monitoring Project 2015 found that women only count for 21% in press information, radio and TV, and 27% in online news and on Twitter. In traditional media, women's presence has increased from 7% in 1995 to 21% in 2015. This is not far from the European average, given that, n the same year, the overall presence of women in print, radio and television news in Europe was 25%. This is significantly less than in the U.S. with 36%. (The global average is 24%).
Reducing the gender gap in the media is urgent: women should have fair access to the media and should be represented in an appropriate way, free from persistent stereotypes. Presenting images of women on an equal footing in the media would be one of the first steps to ensure that this could also happen in everyday life.
