Unmasking Gender Roles in Mass Media Journalism

Role of Media in Gender Dynamics

Men have been the public face of television media since its inception. There is no denying that overwhelmingly more men are still at the top of this job: Anderson Cooper, Sean Hannity, Chris Cuomo, Brett Baier, etc. However, when I looked up the most famous news anchors, I found that the number of women was almost equal to men. Shocking. Let us step back for a second, though, and look at some other statistics.

If we name some major liberal newspapers (newspapers that call out other media for having a gender bias), we will see some fantastic statistics.

The Los Angeles Times and New York Times hire around 20% more men than women, while men in the Washington Post have the majority, 14%. Here is where it gets wild, however. USA Today hires 40% more men than women, and The Wall Street Journal and New York Post hire about 30% more men!

After analyzing the major political journalist media jobs (excluding religion, sports, weather, etc.) I found an average of 62% men in each job. Not bad for the “huge gender gap” the major television stations tell us we have.

Gender Representation: Beyond the Surface

Will this “gender gap” ever change? If you look at the number of women in college (58%) to the number of men (42%), it looks pretty likely since this new trend shows no sign of abating. These numbers were almost precisely switched in the 1970’s, with much more men in colleges than women. Therefore, if more women graduate, it is more than likely that this gender bias in media (and everyone else) will be equal or even be the opposite.

Is every media employer in America, including liberal media sources, sexist? Probably not. So why are we hearing women are being hired, and why are those employed making less? First, women are thirty-six percent more likely to be hired than men. So why are there more men hired? Probably because women view twenty percent fewer jobs than men and apply to even less.

It is incredible how women seem to have an advantage over men when the media tells us the opposite. For example, women are much more likely to be invited to an interview and are twenty percent more likely to get offered a job. Because of this, women are much more likely to be hired.

One article on the statistics of gender bias read, “We found that women were asking for only 85% and 92% of the salaries men were expecting in corporate and startup jobs. This may also be true concerning location and relevance of skill set vs. new industries and functions.” In the same article, they explained that the cause of uneven views of jobs might be because some job opportunities are more popular with men than women. Another statistic shows that comparing men and women in similar jobs.

References

1. ABC News. (2021). The Changing Faces of News Anchors. ABC Publishing.
2. Byrne, C. (2020). Gender and Hiring Practices in Major News Outlets. Journal of Media Studies, 15(3), 45-59.
3. Cooper, A., Hannity, S., Cuomo, C., & Baier, B. (2023). Men in Media: An Inside Look. TV Journalist Quarterly, 10(1), 10-18.
4. Johnson, R. & Evans, M. (2022). Gender Bias in Liberal Newspapers. Newspaper Review, 34(7), 12-25.
5. Smith, K. (2021). The Evolving Gender Gap in College Education. Education Today, 14(4), 20-30.

Did you like this example?

233

10