Some Record Highs and Some Troublesome Dips in Women's Representation in News
This year is turning out to be a year of firsts for gender representation. They are firsts that came far too late, but firsts nonetheless.
A June 2021 report released by RTDNA found that for the first time in more than 25 years of their annual survey, all local TV newsroom survey respondents have women on the news team. Yes, this means that there were still stations that did not have any women on their teams prior to 2021 (typically those with smaller staffs or in smaller markets). We have a lot of feelings about this particular data point.
The report also found that, for the sixth year in a row, there’s a new record high percentage of women TV news directors, coming in at nearly 40% — a 2.3% jump over last year.
Off-screen news is also starting to catch up to 2021. In April, Alessandra Galloni became Reuters’ first woman editor-in-chief in the organization’s 170-year history, and, in March, Mary Margaret was hired as the first woman editor-in-chief for Entertainment Weekly.
The firsts continue when we zoom in on women of color in news leadership positions. In April, Kimberly Godwin was officially announced as the president of ABC News, becoming the first Black woman to do so. Every past ABC News president has been a white man. Most recently, Daisy Veerasingham, a first-generation Briton of Sri Lankan descent, has taken the helm at the Associated Press becoming the first woman and first person of color to lead the organization as president and CEO.
A Troublesome Forecast
Though we’re seeing an increase in women leadership in news organizations, overall representation isn’t keeping pace. In 2021, total women’s representation in the TV news workforce fell from 44.7% to 43.9%, potentially echoing a nationwide trend that sees COVID pushing women out of the workforce. In fact, women’s workforce participation dropped to 57%, the lowest since 1988.
And when we look at not just the news workforce but also at experts quoted in the news, the outcome is even worse. In a report called “The Missing Perspectives of Women in News,” researchers looked at representation in six countries: India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the US. One particularly frustrating finding concluded that, in 2019, women’s voices were quoted in only 29% of online news stories analyzed in the UK — the highest percentage out of all six countries.
Missing Coverage
Why is proper representation in news leadership important? Aside from, you know, basic equality, news directors and managers determine which stories are deemed newsworthy and how each one is covered. In her book, Ladies Leading, Dr. Ava Thompson Greenwell tells the stories of Black women leaders in news, highlighting the various biases in news coverage they fight on a daily basis.
For example, many women who spoke with Dr. Greenwell commented on the propensity for news stations to label missing Black women and girls as “runaways” versus “missing persons.” Amber Alerts and urgent news coverage are reserved for those deemed missing, while “runaways” receive minimal attention. (On a completely related note, Black children remain missing longer on average than non-Black children.) The women highlighted in the book also speak up about the pushback they face when suggesting positive stories about marginalized communities or when asking for voices of women of color.
Stories like these remind us of the true power of representation.
Each inequality, each unchallenged bias, each voice removed from the national discourse can have truly detrimental consequences. When it comes to gender and racial representation in the media, no news is bad news.