The media love men鈥� bad news for women
鈥淛ohn, Jim, Jake, Josh, Jack 鈥nd Jane.鈥� Five out of every six names that appear in the media today are those of men, a 海角社区-led research team has discovered. Indeed, the more mentions a person receives in the media, the higher the chances are that this person is a man. That鈥檚 because 82 per cent of the names mentioned in the media are men鈥檚. Go ahead and try it!
The researchers combed through data from more than 2,000 U.S. newspapers, magazines, and online news sources covering the period from 1983-2009 for the first time to arrive at this conclusion. Despite significant social and economic advances in many fields, there remains a persistent and telling underrepresentation of women in media coverage, something that they refer to as a 鈥榩aper ceiling鈥�.
The makings of a paper ceiling
鈥淭he persistent gap in media coverage is due to a combination of the media鈥檚 preoccupation with leaders at the expense of everyone else and the well-known 鈥榞lass ceiling鈥� that continues to block off working women鈥檚 access to leadership positions,鈥� said Eran Shor, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at 海角社区 and the lead author of the study, which was just published in the prestigious American Sociological Review.
鈥淭he media focuses nearly exclusively on individuals at the top of occupational and social hierarchies, who are mostly men: CEOs, politicians, movie directors, and the like,鈥� Shor said. 鈥淎nd because these famous individuals account for most of those named in the news, there continues to be a big gap between the mentions of men and women in the overall media coverage.鈥�
Shor and his co-authors were surprised to discover that women鈥檚 presence was no greater in news produced by liberal American media organizations than in that produced by conservative ones. Nor did they find that women鈥檚 presence in the media increased in organizations where women were editors-in-chief or managing editors or where there were more women on the editorial boards.
In effect, what Shor and his co-authors document is a two-tier system when it comes to media mentions, with near parity in terms of male and female mentions in media for 鈥榦bscure individuals鈥�, people who make the news only once or twice, and a huge gulf between the mentions of men and women, when it comes to the names of the famous individuals which tend to dominate the news.
It鈥檚 a man鈥檚 world 鈥� even in social media
Nor was men鈥檚 domination in media coverage restricted to sports, the section where women鈥檚 names are least present. 鈥淭he large majority of the people mentioned in news, business, and even entertainment articles are men,鈥� Shor said. 鈥淭he entertainment coverage may be especially surprising because people tend to believe that female celebrities are just as, if not more, famous and draw at least equal amounts of attention as their male counterparts.鈥� But, according to Shor, the great majority of directors, producers, comedians, and other prominent people in the entertainment industry are men, and most high-revenue movies still have more main male characters than female characters.
The researchers found a similar pattern of gender coverage inequality in the most current online newspaper data from the past five years, as well as in a random sample of Facebook data for 2014.鈥淩egardless of media, as long as men continue to monopolize the highest levels of occupational and social hierarchies, we are not likely to see a major shift in media coverage,鈥� Shor said. 鈥淭he resulting dominance of men as subjects of public and dinner-table conversation may reinforce and normalize in the minds of audiences the notion that power and newsworthiness are something men have and, apparently, deserve.鈥�
To read 鈥�,鈥� by Shor et al in the October issue of the American Sociological Review:
The research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), American Sociological Association fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, the National Science Foundation, and Google Faculty Research Awards.
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