10 Sad Truth About Women in Media

We may live in a world where men and women exist together but the sad truth about women in media is, it is still a “man’s world”

The status of women in news and entertainment is as bleak as ever. Little progress has been made in most areas, and there are some places—like sports journalism—where women have lost ground. Representation of women in sports journalism dropped from 17% to 10% last year sad truth about women in media.

Here’s a list of some of the sad truths about women in media and their insights from the report, which draws on 49 studies of women across media platforms:

1. The news industry still hasn’t achieved anything that resembles gender equality:

Women are on camera only 32% approx. of the time in evening broadcast news, and write 37% of print stories news stories. Between 2013 and 2014, female were by-lines and other credits increased just a little more than 1%. At the New York Times, more than 67% of bylines are male.

2. Men still dominate “hard news”:

Even though the 2016 election could be the first time a woman presidential candidate gets a major party nomination, men report 65% approx. of political stories. Men also dominate science coverage, world politics coverage, and criminal justice news. Women have lost traction in sports journalism, with only 10% of sports coverage produced by women. Education and lifestyle coverage were the only areas that demonstrated any real parity.

3. Opinions are a male thing:

Newspaper editorial boards are on average made up of seven men and four women. And the overall commentators on Sunday morning talk shows are more than 70% male.

4. There’s bad news for actresses and minorities:

Women accounted for only 12% of on-screen protagonists in 2014, and 30% of characters with speaking parts. There are also persistent racial disparities: White people are cast in lead roles more than twice as often as people of color, and white film writers outnumber minority writers 3 to 1. In 17% of films, no black people had speaking parts.

5. Women are losing traction behind the scenes:

Women accounted for 25% of writers in 2013-2014, down from 34% the previous year. Women make up only 23% of executive producers (down from 27%) and 20% of show creators (down from 24%). For the 250 most profitable films made in 2014, 83% of the directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors are guys.

6. If you’re a woman, you are probably being underpaid:

Women make up nearly half the workforce but continue to earn significantly less than men who do the same jobs. That nearly 20% wage gap has barely budged in years. The researcher found that women earn less than men in nearly every, a single occupation where there’s enough data to calculate a gender ratio. The sad truth about women in media is that women are better educated than at any other time in history, and getting undergrad and advanced degrees in greater numbers than men are, hasn’t made a difference.

7. Women are less likely to seek promotion than men:

Researchers have found that men are more likely to promote men – and men who are the same ethnicity – which helps perpetuate the lack of diversity at the top. But they have also found that women are less likely to ask for a raise or promotion. One internal survey reveal sad truth about women in media of female employees at Hewlett-Packard found that women applied for a promotion only when they met 100% of the qualifications. Men applied when they met just 50%.

8. Women are frequently misrepresented in advertising and television:

A survey noted the misrepresentation of women on telly, pointing out we are frequently and erroneously portrayed as stereotypes. For example, forty-one percent of advertising showed women in a housewife role and twenty-eight percent in an office role. But eighty-two percent of women are the decision-makers when buying a new family car.

9. On average, women around the world spend more than twice as many hours as men doing unpaid work:

Unpaid work refers to work performed in the home, from childcare, cooking, and cleaning, to collecting water and gathering firewood in communities without electricity and running water. In India, women spend an average of six hours a day performing unpaid work, while men spend only one. The sad truth about women in media is that they spend an average of four hours a day; men just 2.5 hours and there is no country where the gap is zero.

10. When women enter male-dominated industries, the pay decreases: 

As women make the cross over into workspaces mostly occupied by men, often in search of higher salaries with more benefits, the opposite happens—the average pay for the industry tends to drop significantly over time.

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Sshaheen Farha