40 Years Later, Is It Better for Women in Journalism?

It's always useful to look back and measure progress -- not measure our hopes and dreams, but look at what actually happened. Women who currently report and write for Newsweek have reflected on the history of women who worked there 40 years ago, with ambitions blunted and talent thwarted, who decided they weren't going to take it anymore. In a lengthy article in the March 29 issue, today's Newsweek women admit that, in terms of progress, "the victory dance feels premature." Read the entire piece at http://www.newsweek.com/id/235220/output/print


And the latest issue of Media Report to Women carries a nearly parallel piece about a female broadcaster, Alison Owings ("Evolution of a Broadcast Feminist" by Sarah Guthrie). In the 1960s, Owings worked for the ABC Washington bureau and later the NBC owned and operated station in Washington before moving to New York and CBS. The Newsweek women of that era were told "women can't write," and so was Owings. But that didn't stop her from breaking into the reporting ranks and becoming an activist who helped pave the way for younger women to enter TV news in markets large and small. Contact me at sheilagib@erols.com to order a copy of the issue containing this marvelous profile.

Even With Bigelow's Directing Oscar, Hollywood Still A Boys' Town

Kathryn Bigelow's Best Director win at the Academy Awards March 8 was a welcome event. With the golden statuette in her hand, Bigelow became the first woman to win the award for best direction, with her work on "The Hurt Locker."

But female directors, and most female filmmakers, remain in short supply in Hollywood. According to a recent report, in 2009, women constituted just 16% of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films. Women were only 7% of directors in 2009, a figure dead even with the percentage of women directing films in 1987!

Martha Lauzen of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University tracks these figures annually, and each year it is dispiriting to see how little movement there is in women's advancement in the film industry. We need to patronize and praise films that involve women as storytellers and stars, from the indies all the way to the blockbusters, if we want to see more Bigelows walking to the stage to claim recognition for movies -- such as the powerful "Hurt Locker" -- that affect all of us.

Mean Girls?

In the new issue of Vogue magazine, actress/writer Tina Fey says that she received hate mail after she began parodying Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live." "There are people who hate me because of that," she said, adding, "The weird thing is, when Darrell Hammond or will Ferrell or Dana Carvey did an impersonation of a president, no one assumed it was personal, but because Sarah Palin and I are both women and people think women are meaner to each other, everyone assumed it was personal." www.vogue.com/feature/2010_March_Vogue_Cover_Girl_Tina_Fey

Are women meaner to one another, really? Or does the culture, and media tropes, set them up to seem that way?

Consider the catfight coverage of Olympic skiers Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso, who have been competitors since childhood. A Today show correspondent talked about the "icy conditions" emerging in their relationship after Mancuso complained about a "popularity contest" in news coverage about the U.S. ski team. Other media picked that up.

Then Mancuso was frustrated in her attempt to defend her 2006 gold medal after her downhill run was stopped while Vonn, who had crashed on her run, was struggling to get off the course. Mancuso had to wait for 13 skiers before getting another chance, and she didn't medal in that event. She was understandably upset.

Smelling blood, some journalists pounced, looking for cracks in the cameraderie. We ended up with speculation about lot more personal drama than there really was, according to later statements by Mancuso and other team members.

What is it about women doing on-point political parody, as Fey did, or skiing the races of their lives, as Vonn and Mancuso are, that suggests they are mean?

After figure skating titans Victor Plushenko and Evan Lysacek competed, Plushenko whined that a man who doesn't do a quadruple move (Lysacek doesn't) shouldn't win the gold (he did). But it was a one-day story, and no one suggested Plushenko was a meanie.

Looks to me as if assertive women still make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Gender Bias in Media Persists for Female Candidates

At a panel discussion Feb. 18, 2010 at The Aspen Institute in Washington sponsored by Madeleine K. Albright Women's Voices, Erika Falk of Johns Hopkins University showed us the dispiriting results of her research on press coverage of women presidential candidates, beginning with 1872 with Victoria Woodhull. (Yes, that's right; women began running for president before the vote was available to women in every state.) In spite of social progress, women's advances in the economy, in education, and in non-traditional occupations, "There has been almost no change in the pattern of disproportionate coverage," Falk said.

Falk did not compare male winners with female losers. She compared what she called "equivalent candidates" vying for nomination, and these were the results:

Item 1: Men received more coverage. If you aggregate the eight races Falk looked at, male candidates received twice as much coverage. And the articles about them were longer.

Item 2: Men received more substantive coverage. Twenty-seven percent of paragraphs in articles about men described their policy positions -- only 16% for women.

Item 3: Women's status was diminished when their official or professional titles were dropped on subsequent references, as when Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm would be referred to as "Mrs. Chisholm" in subsequent references. This happened 32% of the time for women, but only 11% for men.

Item 4: Physical descriptions of candidates occurred four times for a female candidate to every one time for a male candidate.

There is obviously no upside to this for voters or for female candidates or for the nation, for that matter. The worst of it, says Falk, is that "media bias may not make women lose, but it may discourage them from running."

BBC News: Commander Mom

Kudos to the BBC for launching a series on women at war on February 15 http://news.bbc.co.uk.2/hi/americas/8512484.stm. View this respectful profile of a Canadian officer commanding a combat unit. The emphasis on her family ties dominates the story -- a given, it seems, in media coverage of mothers rising in military units and ascending in performance. Let's see what the BBC offers in the days ahead -- hopefully, an assessment of military women's effectiveness and contributions as well as the family longings that affect any soldier, male or female.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Broadcast network CBS has revised its long-standing policy resisting broadcasting advocacy ads and has accepted $2.5 million from the conservative political group Focus on the Family to air an ad featuring collegiate football star quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. The ad will air during the ad-rich Super Bowl on Feb. 7. Pam Tebow is expected to explain how she rejected medical advice to terminate her pregnancy after contracting a serious illness, with the result that she had a healthy child who is now a famous athlete. Many women's groups, including the National Organization for Women (www.now.org) and the Women's Media Center (www.womensmediacenter.com), have criticized CBS for not announcing the change in policy until confronted about the Tebow/Focus on the Family antiabortion message. An intelligent, reasoned take on the controversy will appear in the Jan. 31Washington Post, and certainly elsewhere, authored by Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Read it here: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012902505.html?hpid=artslot

Anne Frank's Diary: Not Chick Lit, These Readers Say

Some Washington Post readers have taken reporter Monica Hesse to task for writing about The Diary of Anne Frank as if it resonated primarily with young girls. Hesse's article appeared after the recent death of Miep Gies, the last living protector of the Frank family during their years hiding in an Amsterdam attic in a desperate attempt to avoid capture by the Nazis during World War II. While Anne Frank's story undoubtedly riveted readers who read it as girls and young teens, "for [Hesse] to assume that this feeling is peculiar to women diminishes the profound power of both of these lost lives," wrote Charles Tennes in a letter to the Post published January 16. "It is also obnoxiously sexist," he added.

In a letter published the same day, Edward Hayes Jr. said, "I discovered [Anne Frank] when I was a young black boy growing up in Northeast Washington.... Through its examples of neighborly love, determination for survival and heroism... it inspired a young boy not to take life for granted. The story of Anne Frank is indeed for girls, boys and adults."

Hesse quoted only females in her piece about the diary's power and influence ("Legions of women lose their last link to Anne Frank," January 13). Her point, I think, was to show how girls who were near Anne's age when they read the book were changed and shaped by her account of her ordeal. That's certainly a legitimate angle to take as the last link to the Frank family, also a courageous female, leaves the scene. Still, I have to agree with the Post readers who objected to the narrower focus of Hesse's piece. Anne Frank's diary has crossed generations, cultures, languages and sexes -- 25 million copies in 54 languages. Really, shouldn't that have been the headline?