You may notice an influx of women’s voices this International Women’s Day, but do you notice their scarcity during the rest of the year? Find out why women are underrepresented in the media, why it matters, and what student journalists can do to help. (Image: Pixabay)
By Alana Pahor | @Alana_Pahor and Anna Ngov | @annangov
In Australia, women make up just 30 per cent of quoted news sources.
The findings come from the 2023 Women in Media Gender Scorecard, which analyses over 18,000 press, radio and TV news reports from July last year.
Reading that figure, many of us scratch our heads, wondering how women are still so heavily underrepresented in Australian news despite a surge of female journalists entering the profession in recent years.
To journalist, columnist and independent researcher, Dr Jenna Price, who has been looking into the issue since 2010, the answer is simple.
“Our society is slow to promote women to very senior positions in organisations … you don’t naturally go to someone who is not in a senior position in an organisation to get a quote,” she says.
While more women have risen to senior positions in recent years, Price says journalists still tend to fall back on long-established male voices because “they’ve got some kind of status or credibility”.
Gender bias remains prevalent in the newsroom in 2023, with many journalists preferring to return to familiar male sources rather than challenge themselves to seek out women experts for interviews.
Associate Professor in Journalism at Curtin University, Dr Kathryn Shine, adds that journalists’ tendency to rely on male sources isn’t the only contributing factor to women’s underrepresentation in news media.
She says that “women may have some reservations about doing media interviews” due to a variety of factors including “concern about receiving online abuse, concern about how they will be depicted, [and] concern about inaccurate reporting”.
This representation barrier is confirmed in the 2023 collaborative research report Going on the Record: Gendered Experiences of Media Engagement, of which Shine is the lead author.
The report found 36 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men surveyed have “experienced trolling in response to a media interview”.
However, women were more likely to receive sexist abuse, with one female participant reporting death threats and commenting, “They make fun of my appearance and question my expertise”.
Sexist and threatening reactions to female sources featured in news media, combined with journalists’ bias towards male sources, are sustaining an uneven industry playing field in which women feel discouraged from speaking out and are often undermined when they do.
This in itself is a barrier to achieving gender equality and balanced reporting; those who are typically given the platform to participate in and on the news speaks volumes as to who holds the greatest power and industry status.
Price says it is essential to combat this disparity with increased source diversity, as “sources are such an important part of the work that journalists do”.
“Having the quality, the range, the depth, the breadth – that’s crucial,” she says.
“Women are not a homogenous group. You have women with a range of ideas and opportunities and viewpoints.
“But, it’s just [about] trying to increase the diversity … we need to move beyond pale, male and stale.”
While gender diversity is an issue that needs to be addressed, it is evident that women are not the only group experiencing underrepresentation in the media.
Shine identifies that a low number of representatives from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds in the 2023 report highlights that the issue not only lies with gender imbalance.
“I think that’s reflective of the fact that [CALD people are] not being included in the news very much,” she says.
As women and CALD journalists are more likely to engage with diverse sources, compared to male journalists, Shine says an effort within newsrooms to promote women to leadership roles will help counteract this underrepresentation.
She also encourages women to “be quite upfront about [their] aspirations in terms of [their] career,” and not to shy away from masculinised news beats if it is what they “really want to do”.
However, Shine says she “strongly argue[s] that it’s not just up to women to change this”.
“Male bosses and male journalists must be aware of this and must be really proactively trying to seek out more female voices to include in their coverage.”
That being said, Shine says another, perhaps more crucial, step for increased representation of women in media moving forward is educating student journalists on the importance of diverse sourcing.
“We have an opportunity to have a big influence on the next generations of journalists, and if they are more aware of these kinds of things, we might really see a difference,” she says.
“If we can make journalism students aware of this from the outset, they’re going to be much more likely to take the steps needed to encourage women to be involved in the news.”
Shine says gender-specific interviewing education at university is particularly important to eliminate fear of finding and approaching new interviewees, as this leads student journalists to neglect diverse sourcing when they enter the industry.
“From my understanding, a lot of journalism teachers teach interviewing, but they don’t really consider it from a gendered perspective,” she says.
Shine’s advice for students feeling anxious about reaching out to women for interviews is to remember that “most people are willing to speak to you if you’re a journalist”.
“I want journalism students to feel really encouraged by that and to feel like they should be able to approach anyone that they think is interesting, and has a perspective to include, rather than feeling like ‘I have to go with a safe option, because I feel nervous about approaching someone different’.
“The way to think about it is that it is a compliment when you approach someone for an interview. You’re recognising their expertise or their experience, and most of them want to do it.”
For student journalists feeling lost on where to begin looking for diverse sources, Shine recommends visiting the Women for Media database, which provides the profiles and contact details of Australian women experts from various industries.
However, it appears that many student journalists are already leading the way towards more diverse sourcing.
Shine’s 2021 research article Gender and sourcing in student journalism in Australia and New Zealand found that 44 per cent of the sources quoted in The Junction during 2020 were women – far higher than the news industry average.
“I do think that young … emerging journalists are more aware of these issues and that’s a really good sign,” she says.
That being said, while it is relatively easy to give oxygen to women’s perspectives in the secure environment of university, student journalists must strive for a media-diverse future as they enter the newsroom too.
This is the only way to ensure that these promising student practices effectively translate into the industry.
ontherecordunisa.com 