Gender in/and the news in the UK and Republic of Ireland : slow but (un)steady progress

Wheatley, Dawn and Ross, Karen and Carter, Cynthia and Boyle, Karen (2024) Gender in/and the news in the UK and Republic of Ireland : slow but (un)steady progress. Journalism. pp. 1-20. ISSN 1464-8849 (https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241276836)

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Abstract

For the half-century or so in which the relationship between women and news has been researched, two of the key themes have been the underrepresentation and marginalisation of women as both subjects/sources and journalists. The latest Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) iteration – the largest international collaborative study of women and news, running since 1995 – found the pace of change regarding women’s visibility across the news landscape to be painfully slow. Focusing on the 2020 data from the UK and Ireland, this article asks how visible are women in the news and how has this changed over time? It documents how women remain overshadowed as sources and subjects: for every two women seen or heard, there are five men. While the number of women journalists is gradually increasing, they are still less likely to cover prestigious beats such as politics and have the strongest showing as news anchors and presenters. In this article, we also use news about politics and COVID-19 as vignettes to illustrate how in times of crisis or when authoritative voices are sought, journalists are often drawn to those male sources who are already more present than women in positions of power. This contributes to the marginalisation of women’s voices in the most prominent news stories and undermines their right to full participation in democratic society.

ORCID iDs

Wheatley, Dawn, Ross, Karen, Carter, Cynthia and Boyle, Karen ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0162-2656;
  • Item type:Article
    ID code:90393
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    24 August 2024
    Published
    24 August 2024
    Published Online
    1 August 2024
    Accepted
    Subjects:
    Department:Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS)
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:28 Aug 2024 11:37
    Last modified:11 Nov 2024 14:26
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/90393
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