Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

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

Wheatley, Dawn, Ross, Karen, Carter, Cynthia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5424-9835 and Boyle, Karen 2024. Gender in/and the news in the UK and Republic of Ireland: Slow but (un)steady progress? Journalism 10.1177/14648849241276836

[thumbnail of wheatley-et-al-2024-gender-in-and-the-news-in-the-uk-and-republic-of-ireland-slow-but-(un)steady-progress.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Download (1MB) | Preview

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.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Published Online
Status: In Press
Schools: Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISSN: 1464-8849
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 6 August 2024
Date of Acceptance: 9 July 2024
Last Modified: 09 Sep 2024 08:57
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171183

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics