Is there any analysis of why this might be the case?

There are some really great women’s news websites working to correct this, with women writers writing about issues that often don’t crop up in the mainstream press:

Women’s eNews – http://www.womensenews.org/

Womens Views on News – http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/ (site seems to be temporarily down, but give it a try later)

I have to admit an interest – I write for WVoN – but I thought it was important to add a bit of hope to a post that might otherwise be pretty bleak!

the fact that a paper has female writers doens’t mean it pro women, case in question the Mail,

“We hope this research contributes to the debate on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day and helps to build a fairer, more meritocratic press.”

Me too – but I’m not optimistic that a gender balance will change the agenda of Tory-leaning press. Being female isn’t an ideology.

“Sue Matthias, Chair of Women in Journalism and a journalist herself, says: …. We hope this research contributes to the debate on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day and helps to build a fairer, more meritocratic press.”

Sounds like code for “I want more of my friends to get better jobs and so advance my ideological agenda that would otherwise fail” to me.

Any evidence this is the result of anything other than female choice?

The whole piece looks like a classic “correlation implies causality” fallacy to me.

Any evidence this is the result of anything other than female choice?

You can express pretty much every problem society has as a result of “choice”. Financial crisis? Choice. Robbery? Choice. Global warming? Choice. Using “savings” instead of “cuts” on the BBC? Choice. It’s a cheap way of dodging the question, nothing more.

“Choice” would only be a be-all end-all explanation if in every circumstance every person had a completely free set of choices, without any constraints imposed on what choices they could make, and without any other person having the ability to interfere with the effect of those choices.

So if you split the UK’s population in half along a single variable, and find there’s a massive difference in the “choices” that are being made with respect to that variable, it seems reasonable to ask why there’s that difference, if it’s desirable that there is that difference, and if anything can be done about that difference.

With regard to the second of those questions, having a vital component of a functional democracy (public access to information, outside state control) be run by people whose life experiences are on average not the same as the population as a whole leads to the situation where what information is considered important by journalists is not the same as the information considered important by the population as a whole.

How does this match up to the number of women in journalisim or studying it as a percentage of the total?

What % are working class.

Much of the media is owned and produced by men and they just put out what they think women want to see and hear.

Case in point being the soap operas. The male white middle class writers of these programmes really believe that the largelly female audience want to see men portrayed as pondscum and women always shown as hapless victims. They believe that women viewers don’t want to see any postitive depictions of fathers and that they want to see all Dads portrayed as feckless, abusive jack the lads who arn’t interested in their kids.

Of course, we could just ignore gender as a marker and concentrate on the quality of what journalists write…

@11. Indeed. Tabloid “journalism” would be rubbish regardless if it’s written by men or women.

And there’s still HORRENDOUS bias against men in the primary-school teaching sector, then! The figures don’t really mean much by themselves – they certainly don’t justify the headline, or Matthias’s conclusion that “attitudes are still alive and well in many places”. Just as possible that men are more likely to be interested in journalism, or have the relevant skills. Or perhaps a mix of good reasons and bad reasons.

Without deeper analysis, you can search through any industry to find one that doesn’t have a 50/50 gender split (it won’t take long) and use that to claim sexism is the reason. But it would actually be really, really weird if every profession employed an even number of men and women.

Why should women be expected to dominate arts coverage, out of interest (this isn’t a snide question, I’m honestly interested in the rationale)?

*”OLD attitudes are alive and well”

@8 David: “How does this match up to the number of women in journalisim or studying it as a percentage of the total?”

That is not going to be illuminating. Most journalists do not have an academic qualification in journalism and most have a degree in something. The most important thing for a science correspondent, for example, is a wide passion and understanding of science, along with the ability to communicate. Journalism skills (eg the ability to interview) and ethics can be learned whilst working.

Remember that journalism students may not wish to pursue a career in journalism. They may study it as a complement to something more academic (eg media or communications). Or they may prefer a job in public relations.

!3: Chaise Guevara: “Why should women be expected to dominate arts coverage, out of interest (this isn’t a snide question, I’m honestly interested in the rationale)?”

On the same irrational basis, should we not expect that the majority of male arts reporters are gay?

I’m not going to justify any presumption, but I’ll throw up some random observations.

Historically arts departments at universities have attracted more female students than males. This is now reflected in academic appointments; there are still few female academics in science and engineering; there are lots in arts.

Outside of universities, arts graduates (more realistically, post grads) can use their knowledge directly in galleries, museums, auction houses, book publishing etc. In those fields, women appear to be getting on.

Lots of top jobs in the arts are occupied by men in their 50s and 60s. We should assume that the proportion will change when those men retire.

Newspapers have employed women journalists for years. Female political and foreign affairs correspondents arrived twenty five years ago (guesstimate). Industrial relations correspondents? There were lots of “men only” environments, so reporters were men. Those environments have changed, so we should expect that female journalists will get their nose in; always presuming that the subject interests them.

We can count the number of national newspapers on our fingers and toes. If we double or treble that number, the result is the head count for journalists who primarily write about the arts.

@ 16 Charlieman

All of your rationale makes sense. TBH, I was just surprised that art was heavily subscribed by a single gender.

That said, I’m a male English post-grad, and I remember that back in college there were only three of us blokes in a 20-strong literature class. Given our teacher’s favourite literary themes (chauvinism and the evils of Male Pride), we tended to sit in a defensive huddle in a corner of the classroom…

So actually, I was thinking more “art” than “the arts”. The latter I know are female-heavy, the former I’m not so sure.

7. cim – “You can express pretty much every problem society has as a result of “choice”. Financial crisis? Choice. Robbery? Choice. Global warming? Choice. Using “savings” instead of “cuts” on the BBC? Choice. It’s a cheap way of dodging the question, nothing more.”

Sure because most of those things *are* choices. It is not a cheap way of dodging the question. It goes to the heart of social policy – do we want to enable people to do what they want or do we want to force them into narrow ideologically-driven pigeonholes to suit our own prejudices.

““Choice” would only be a be-all end-all explanation if in every circumstance every person had a completely free set of choices, without any constraints imposed on what choices they could make, and without any other person having the ability to interfere with the effect of those choices.”

Now this is dodging the question. Or more accurately rationalising the fact that other people do not make choices that you approve of. Big deal. Suck it up.

“So if you split the UK’s population in half along a single variable, and find there’s a massive difference in the “choices” that are being made with respect to that variable, it seems reasonable to ask why there’s that difference, if it’s desirable that there is that difference, and if anything can be done about that difference.”

By all means, it is reasonable to ask why there is a difference. It does not make much sense to ask if it is desirable because it is none of your business.

“With regard to the second of those questions, having a vital component of a functional democracy (public access to information, outside state control) be run by people whose life experiences are on average not the same as the population as a whole leads to the situation where what information is considered important by journalists is not the same as the information considered important by the population as a whole.”

And yet there is less than zero demand for female-run media.

18/S.M.F.S.: Or more accurately rationalising the fact that other people do not make choices that you approve of.

No, not really. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Any individual can make whatever choices they want, and I’m going to assume that they’ve made the choices that are best for them. Their situation. Their choice. Their decision. I have no right to interfere.

But, let’s take Chaise’s mention at 13 of the lack of men in primary teaching. This lack is known to contribute to the problem that some young boys have in engaging with education. So, there’s a case that our education system would be better if more men wanted to be primary teachers.

This isn’t about taking random men off the streets and saying “The government has decided that we’re below quota for male primary teachers – you must become one.”. This is about looking to see if there are external factors influencing their decisions not to become primary teachers, and if there’s anything that can be done about those external factors.

It’s about giving people a freer choice when there are restrictions on it, not about restricting their choice to conform to some idea about what society should look like.

(Now, if it were to be discovered that there were no external factors, and it was that the very act of identifying as a man almost always caused one to have no interest in teaching young children, then I would leave well alone. I’ve seen no evidence that this is the case, though)

To take a more exaggerated but still real example, a serf in the middle ages was technically choosing to work the land in near-slavery conditions for their Baron. They didn’t have to – they could run away, or start a revolution, or turn to theft and robbery – but most of them chose to stay as serfs. Now, one could accept that as an exercise of free will, and anyone asking whether most of the working population being serfs was desirable was just wanting to interfere with their choice – or one could recognise that the coercive power of the state and other influential social actors was restricting their choice such that being a serf – though not what they’d have done with a freer choice – was the best choice they could make right then.

Now, clearly, the external factors that may be causing women to avoid choosing journalism or men to avoid choosing primary teaching are not as strong or as obvious as those causing middle-ages peasant to choose serfdom. But I don’t think that should prevent us from looking for them, and removing them, to improve the range of viable choices available to people.

So, were I in the middle-ages, and somehow had both my current ethics and sufficient political power to do something effective with them, I wouldn’t be going up to serfs and saying “Your decision to stay a serf is bad. Rise up and die pointlessly against your masters.”. I would try to dismantle or weaken the system that kept most people in serfdom. If people, that done, chose to remain as serfs when there were other viable options available, that would be fine (history shows that they didn’t, of course).

And yet there is less than zero demand for female-run media.

You have absolutely no proof of that. Come back when you’ve temporarily reversed the gender balance at all levels of the media, and so tested it. Perhaps if the newspapers were mostly run by women they’d have a higher circulation (not, of course, specifically because they were run by women, but because of the secondary effects of that). Since it’s never been tried, we just don’t know.

It will only be a matter of time before someone says…

WHAT ABOUT THE MENZZZZ?

“Three quarters of news journalists are men according to exclusive new research commissioned by Women in Journalism”

In other words, women in journalism want the job market to be rigged in their favour. If they have not said it yet, they soon will.

@ 20 Dan

Shh! Don’t tempt fate. There’s been a refreshing lack of whatabouthemenzing in this thread.

@ 21

“In other words, women in journalism want the job market to be rigged in their favour. If they have not said it yet, they soon will.”

How can that possibly be what you quoted “in other words”?

19. cim – “Any individual can make whatever choices they want, and I’m going to assume that they’ve made the choices that are best for them. Their situation. Their choice. Their decision. I have no right to interfere.”

But you’re not assuming that. You’re assuming that the alleged lack of women (a point that is debatable in itself) is due to something other than choice.

“This is about looking to see if there are external factors influencing their decisions not to become primary teachers, and if there’s anything that can be done about those external factors.”

By all means. Let’s do that. But that is not what this thread is about. This one is about assuming that there are external factors and then demanding something is done about them. We have no evidence of those external factors and I see no need to assume they exist.

“It’s about giving people a freer choice when there are restrictions on it, not about restricting their choice to conform to some idea about what society should look like.”

I would believe you if the Left had ever taken that path any time in the last 50 years or so. The Left has preferred the more authoritarian approach of imposing something like a quota and reducing everyone’s freedom. As seems to be implied here given its focus on men who do not Good Think and not empowering women.

“Now, one could accept that as an exercise of free will, and anyone asking whether most of the working population being serfs was desirable was just wanting to interfere with their choice – or one could recognise that the coercive power of the state and other influential social actors was restricting their choice such that being a serf – though not what they’d have done with a freer choice – was the best choice they could make right then.”

Except, given the massive repressive state apparatus, no one in their right mind could confuse that with an exercise of free will. A massive repressive state apparatus that simply does not exist here for women.

“You have absolutely no proof of that.”

Feel free to start your own women-run press and see how it goes.