A study undertaken by a leading UK media academic, Linda Christmas, showed that:

• women are the ones who have to adjust their way of doing things in order to work in a predominantly male environment.
• male dominance of the news has led to the promotion of male values and news-gathering techniques which will take a long time to change.
• more women working in media organisations could have a profound impact on what is reported, how it is reported and where it is displayed in the newspaper.
• the aim is to get 30% women's presence in the workplace, including media organisations, but that still leaves the question of how many women get into decision making roles?
• newspapers play a crucial role in forming public opinion, what we read about is often discussed at home or at work and radio and television often follow the agenda set by the press.
• newspapers, seeing falling circulation, particularly independent newspapers, are realising that they need to attract more women readers in order to get more revenue from advertisers.
• newspapers have also realised that in order to attract women readers they need more females in decision making roles such as deputy editor, news editor or feature editor.

EXERCISE

Get a selection of newspapers and analyse news stories to discover whether they exclude or include women.

• how many sources are women
• from whose point of view is the news reported
• examine the tone and content of stories to see if there are differences in the ways reporters write about women and men
• are there double standards in the way the news is reported?
  e.g. a man receiving sympathy because he is being criticised for hitting his wife, while the wife is reported as 'deserving' the punishment because she disobeyed him.
• do the images and illustrations used reinforce or contradict the content?
• check whether the language used reinforces old stereotypes

A gender sensitive media have a key role to play in development.