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Summer 2018 Volume 46, Number 3
Women Journos, Page 2
Pressures on Journalists in Emerging Countries ……………………………… 4
Research in Depth: Gender and Transformation in South African News …. 6
Research in Depth: Signicance of Christian Patriarchy in Pop Culture …..12
SOS to Hollywood: Calling More Female Film Critics ……………………….21
Commentary: Dishing About the Duchess ……………………………………. 24
Covering Soccer a Hassle
for Women Reporters
The World Cup and soccer
matches in general have long been row-
dy events but 2018 has been particular-
ly unpleasant for women sports report-
ers covering the matches. They’ve en-
dured groping from fans and online
harassment from trolls who dislike
women reporting on male athletic con-
tests.
In Russia during the World
Cup in June, Julieth Gonzalez Theran
was reporting live for Deutsche Welle’s
Spanish news channel when a man
rushed her, brushed her breast and
aempted to kiss her. It appeared that
he was waiting until the cameras rolled
to get the grab on live TV. Gonzalez
Theran kept her cool but afterwards
shot o a furious Instagram message.
“RESPECT! We do not deserve
this treatment,” she wrote in Spanish
on an Instagram post that contained
video of the incident. “We are equally
valuable and professionals. I share the
joy of football, but we must identify the
limits of aection and harassment.”
The objectionable moment is here:
hps://www.instagram.com/p/
BkDMyupDFqv/?
utm_source=ig_embed-the-women-
journalists-in-europes-media
T
he #metoo movement exposed fault lines through-
out the media world with the reverberations contin-
uing. Newsrooms have been geing increased scru-
tiny, with the lens widening beyond sexual assault
to issues of institutional bias in reporting and editing, persis-
tent barriers to advancement for women journalists, and in-
equities in compensation. It’s not a prey picture and it indi-
cates disingenuousness on the part of media organizations
who expose the misdeeds of others while failing to rectify
what’s wrong in house.
What is changing is
that the problems for women
in media have moved from
the anecdotal to the veried
and documented. The pres-
ence of more women in higher
education and academic re-
search has played a huge part,
as has the courage of women
pushing from inside their cor-
porations and professional
organizations. Recent re-
search is summarized here:
Newsroom numbers –
Shhh!: Farai Chideya’s report
on gender in newsrooms elicited a cautious response by
some of the 15 major news organizations from which she
requested data on the gender of 2016 political reporters, and
partial data or no response at all from others. Only USA To-
Women Journos Fighting on
Multiple Fronts—at Home, Too
Covering Soccer A Hassle, Page 23
Women Journos, from Page 1
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 2 www.mediareporttowomen.com
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MEDIA REPORT TO WOMEN
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Dr. Ray E. Hiebert, Publisher
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day, The New York Times, NPR and The Washington
Post provided the requested data. “It was even di-
cult to get reporters and editors to talk about the is-
sue,” Chideya wrote. “Often, they would do so only if
they were on background or o the record, which is
curious given journalists champion transparency
when it comes to other institutions. That raises the
question of whether journalists are afraid of retalia-
tion if they speak on the record about the race and
gender dynamics of their reporting teams.” Chideya
compiled the report while a fellow at the Joan Shoren-
stein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at
Harvard’s Kennedy School. Read it here: hps://
shorensteincenter.org/kerner-fty-years-later-
newsroom-diversity/
Twier gender silos: Researchers Nikki Ush-
er, Jesse Holcomb, and Justin Liman explored
whether Twier makes some of the existing gender
bias against women in political journalism even
worse. Studying journalists’ Twier behavior in terms
of the dimensions of their peer-to-peer relationships
and a comprehensive sample of permanently creden-
tialed journalists for the U.S. Congress, substantial
evidence of gender bias beyond existing inequities
emerges. Most alarming is that male “Beltway” jour-
nalists amplify and engage male peers almost exclu-
sively, while female journalists tend to engage most
with each other. The study also identied the 25 polit-
ical reporters whom male political reporters retweet
the most. Of the 25, just three are women. “We found
that male journalists, indeed, were more likely to re-
tweet other male journalists— in fact, when male
journalists retweet, they retweet men almost three
times more often than they retweet women,” the trio
said. Their research is here: hps://www.scribd.com/
document/382342197/Twier-Makes-It-Worse-
Political-Journalists-Gendered-Echo-Chambers-and-
the-Amplication-of-Gender-Bias?
cam-
paign=SkimbitLtd&ad_group=66960X1564645X766512
875e1699a476aa2106c8d85c&keyword=660149026&s
ource=hp_aliate&medium=aliate
Women calling more shots in TV news: The
percentage of women TV news directors recovered
Thank you for your ongoing support for
research on women and media!
www.mediareporttowomen.com 3 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
from last year’s drop to set a new, all-time record at
34.3%, according to the 2018 RTDNA/Hofstra Univer-
sity Newsroom Survey. Women news directors were
most likely to be found in the biggest markets and, in
both the largest and smallest newsrooms. Public TV
stations followed Fox and then NBC aliates were
most likely to have women news directors; ABC and
CBS lagged a bit behind. Women news directors were
less likely to be found in the Northeast than any other
region. Overall, the percentage of women and people
of color in TV newsrooms and in TV news manage-
ment are at the highest levels ever measured, but
while the minority population in the U.S. has risen
12.4 points in the last 28 years, the minority workforce
in TV news is up just 7. The study, with a variety of
other diversity measurements for television, is here:
hps://rtdna.org/
arti-
cle/2018_research_women_and_people_of_color_in_lo
cal_tv_and_radio_news?
utm_source=subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_c
ampaign=np&_zs=hT3LX&_zl=aVdI1
Communication industry gender metrics stag-
nant: Even though women make up more than half
the population of the United States, and also comprise
three-fourths of college and university communica-
tion school graduates, a survey of the communication
industries in 2018 conrmed that women earn lower
salaries than men; are more likely to spend fewer
years in the communications professions than men
and lack longevity in their current positions; are mid-
dle managers and in junior-level positions, while men
dominate top management; are promoted less than
men because of company culture. This dismal news
comes from the 2018 Kopenhaver Center Report, Flor-
ida International University. These ndings are based
on responses from 900 communicators who accessed
the survey via 22 national professional organizations
which agreed to partner with the Kopenhaver Center
to distribute the survey to their memberships over a
period of ve months, from September 2017 to Janu-
ary 2018. The full report is here: hp://carta.u.edu/
kopenhavercenter/wp-content/uploads/
sites/17/2018/06/Kopenhaver-Center-Report-2018-ver-
1.pdf
Dollars dwindling for diversity programs: A
study by the Democracy Fund shows that nancial
support to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in
news outlets has been decreasing as legacy news or-
ganizations under nancial pressure can no longer
allocate resources and philanthropic groups are not
investing enough to make up the dierence. Women
in particular are the losers: There has been signicant-
ly less investment in gender-related news and stang
compared to that for racial and ethnic groups. Details
about this vexing development are here: hps://
www.democracyfund.org/publications/supporting-
diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-journalism-trends
Ponying up pounds: BBC watchers aware of
its embarrassment when it released salary gures in
2017 are seeing a smaller gender pay gap with its re-
cent release of its 2018 gures: an 8.4% pay gap. How-
ever, reports The Guardian, “about a quarter of the
apparent improvement is due to a restructuring that
saw BBC Studios – the division that produces much of
the corporation’s drama and documentary output –
merge with BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s prot-
making arm. This meant sta at BBC Studios, work-
ing on shows such as Blue Planet, Casualty and
EastEnders, are no longer technically employed by
the public-service element of the corporation, helping
to reduce the headline gure.” BBC China Editor
Carrie Gracie resigned in protest in January 2018 after
the BBC released gures showing enormous earning
disparities between BBC’s male and female senior
journalists, including Gracie and her North American
counterpart. In June Gracie seled with the BBC,
which provided back pay Gracie says she will donate
to organizations working on pay equity for women.
Details are here: hps://variety.com/2018/tv/news/bbc
-apology-gender-pay-gap-journalist-carrie-gracie-
1202861514/
Same old story: News coverage in Europe is
overwhelmingly dominated by male journalists and
commentators, who spend much of their time writing
about other men, a landmark new study of print and
online news outlets has found. The supremacy of men
in shaping and covering the continent’s news agenda
endures despite the fact that in many of the 11 coun-
tries surveyed, women make up around half the num-
ber of journalists and more women than men are
choosing journalism as a career. The researchers, who
looked at reporters’ bylines and the images accompa-
nying stories, found that in nearly every country,
across both print and digital, men wrote most of the
content in the news, business, and comment sections.
Across all 11 countries, men wrote 41% of the stories,
compared to just 23% wrien by women, while al-
most half of all the pictures (43%) that were published
were just of men, compared to just 15% featuring only
women. The balance was made up of un-bylined /
agency articles. The study, conducted by the Europe-
an Journalism Observatory, discovered that the gen-
der imbalance was generally more obvious in tradi-
tional print media. Digital news outlets on the whole
had a slightly more equal balance, although most of
these, too, favored male bylines and photographs of
men. In some countries and outlets, more articles
were published under anonymous agency bylines
than by female reporters. Details are here: hps://
en.ejo.ch/research/where-are-all-the-women-
journalists-in-europes-media
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 4 www.mediareporttowomen.com
tions that male reporters do not. For those able to
break free of those stereotyped roles, their work is
often patronized. Despite the risks, danger, and even
death they face, those women reporters and their
work are not viewed as courageous, or heroic.
These, and other reasons, explain the lack of
women in newsrooms and news management.
The International Women’s Media Founda-
tion (IWMF) has noted the signicant gap between
male and female journalists globally. Its extensive
study, Global Report on the Status of Women in
News Media (2017), found that across more than 500
companies in nearly 60 countries, 73% of top man-
agement jobs in news organizations were occupied
by men compared to 27% occupied by women. Sol-
id glass ceilings were in place in 20 of the 59 coun-
tries studied. Among reporters, 64% were male, on-
ly 36% female.
The same IWMF study was unable to collect
statistically reliable income data, but observed the
men are far more likely to hold full-time jobs in
news media (66.7%) versus women (33.3%) and are
much more likely to be in senior roles. This, of
course, has implications for their job security and
overall earnings.
In the experience of the author, who has
consulted on ways to increase the nancial sustaina-
bility of news media in dozens of freedom-restricted
or emerging countries during the last 15 years, there
are interrelated forces that create these situations.
Here are a few.
Institutional Forces: These take many
forms. Few newsrooms achieve gender parity in
hiring. Some of it is neglect: hiring women is not a
priority. Some of it is by design: companies prefer
not to hire women. Yet in too many places, there is
no legal recourse against discrimination and women
are unable to seek redress for this lack of opportuni-
ty. Thus, there are seldom pipelines of qualied
women ready to advance in the workforce and
openings are easily lled with male journalists.
Training programs designed to advance women in
management roles are frequently unsophisticated,
lled with more “touchy-feely” topics such as self-
condence, and less focus on topics like business
management, audience research or nance.
That said, there are limited instances in de-
veloping countries where women have achieved
some level of parity. Those include post-communist
countries where gender equality was enforced over
a long period of time; in countries where journalism
salaries are so low they are below a living wage level
and, thus, are unaractive to male wage-earners,
such as in Belarus; or in countries where male popu-
lations have been devasted by war (Afghanistan) or
H
la Hla Htay, Senior Correspondent for Agence
France Presse in Myanmar, has courageously
covered the country since 2004. Posing as a picnick-
er, she was the rst to get forbidden photographs of
the junta’s massive new capital under construction
in Naypyidaw. She was the rst to conrm Aung
San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest. She cov-
ered the earliest anti-Muslim aacks as people were
burned to death along the roads outside Lashio.
She gained access to banned areas where the mili-
tary had conducted ethnic cleansing and uncovered
rst-hand reports of its use of rape as a tool of war.
She has been amed on social media for her report-
ing, threatened with death, and vilied as an adul-
teress when someone posted falsied photos of her
that swept across Facebook.
And earlier this year when male journalists
from competing organizations came to Myanmar to
cover the plight of the Rohingya, they suggested a
good role for her would be to act as their translator
and help them line up some important interviews.
She said no.
Women journalists face unique pressures in
the developing world and elsewhere, not the least of
which is the perception that their work has less val-
ue than men’s. Often, they are conned to roles that
limit their reporting to “women’s topics,” or enter-
tainment and social news. They encounter glass ceil-
ings that limit professional growth. They are often
viewed as handmaidens to the men who do the
“real” reporting and asked to perform clerical func-
Pressures Facing Women
Journalists in Emerging
Countries
By Michelle J. Foster
Partner – Media Development
Newsgain
Michelle J. Foster is a consult-
ant who helps news media com-
panies improve business perfor-
mance. She has worked with
organizations throughout the
United States and in China, SE
Asia, the Balkans, Eastern Eu-
rope and Africa. Previously, she
was a corporate executive with Ganne Co., Inc.'s News-
paper Division, and later a Knight International Journal-
ism Fellow. Currently, Foster is a founding partner of
Newsgain and a frequent author and speaker.
www.mediareporttowomen.com 5 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
other social devastation, such as alcohol (Mongolia).
Lack of legal protections: In the MENA
region, there are no national laws that prohibit
workplace discrimination and, correspondingly, its
news organizations are some of the least likely
worldwide to have company policies on gender eq-
uity. In Myanmar, the 2008 Constitution “provides a
loophole for discrimination which states, ‘nothing in
this section shall prevent the appointment of men to
positions that are naturally suitable for men only.’”
Deeply entrenched bias among editors and
readers about what is newsworthy: Editors fre-
quently fail to nd women, and news about women,
as interesting or prestigious to cover as news about
men. “Male” news is perceived to be investigative,
hard-hiing. News organizations fail to cultivate
expert women sources, so women are portrayed
mainly in their roles as homemakers, mothers, sex
objects or victims. Female reporters are balkanized
into soft beats such us health, education, culture and
entertainment.
For example, a landmark study conducted
by the Myanmar Women’s Journalist Society in con-
junction with IMS-Fojo, showed that female repre-
sentation in Myanmar media is the lowest in Asia.
It noted, “when women are sources of subjects in
the news, women are more likely to be quoted in
relation to a personal experience they recount rather
than as experts.”
Dr. Xanthe Schar, founder of the Fuller
Project for International Reporting and an expert on
gender, noted “this bias among editors aects so
much. They place much less relative value on wom-
en’s contributions in many areas … Journalism’s
role in writing history is outsized and it is vital that
we get it right at the outset. When women and their
contributions are ignored or discounted in original
reporting, it has long-term eects on the overall pic-
ture of that period of time or series of events.”
Cultural constraints: These are vast, implic-
it and often unrecognized. In China, being a report-
er is often viewed as a low status and dangerous
job: perhaps not physically dangerous, although it
certainly can be, but politically dangerous for seri-
ous journalists. For example, Chinese women re-
porters who aended an extended journalism train-
ing program in Phnom Pen, Cambodia, faced strong
opposition from their families to their chosen work.
In Myanmar, religious arguments are used to justify
the demands that women take submissive or subor-
dinate roles, and families are reluctant to have their
daughters traveling alone or after dark. In an equa-
torial country where the sun goes down every day
at around 6:00 pm, this limits their ability to work
late or report news that breaks after hours. In So-
malia, strict taboos exist restricting contact between
unrelated males and females. Journalism trainer
Chuck Rice said that when teaching male reporters
how to do “man in the street” interviews, they resist-
ed, claiming it was impossible for them just to walk up
to a woman they didn’t know and speak to her.
Marriage, children and lack of access to child
care: Media owners in developing countries are often
frustrated that their investments in training female
journalists are wasted because once they marry and/or
have children, they permanently leave the workforce.
This is not inaccurate. Yet in third world and other
environments, cultural norms place great pressures on
women to exist in traditional roles once they are mar-
ried and have children. And media organizations sel-
dom provide child or health care services that would
support the continued advancement of women in the
workforce. While in South Asia and Latin America,
a signicant number of women in executive media
leadership roles have inherited or married into the
businesses, and usually have the means to have
personal obligations seen to while they work, this
is much less common in SE Asia or Africa.
Lack of mentorship: There are many powerful
arguments that mentoring is good for business. And,
while it is important for women to mentor other wom-
en, it is also important for them to have male mentors,
particularly when top jobs are almost exclusively held
by men. Yet matching male mentors with high-
potential women can raise issues. WAN-IFRA noted
this issue in its guidelines to establishing a mentoring
program, observing that “both parties may perceive a
risk that their relationship could be misconstrued as a
personal, rather than professional, alliance.”
Violence, threats of violence, and legal perse-
cution: There is a full range of gendered aacks that
are used against women journalists. Khadija Ismayilo-
va, an Azerbaijani investigative reporter who pub-
lished details of the corrupt business activities of the
president and his family, was blackmailed and threat-
ened that images of her having sex would be released
publicly if she did not behave. She was later impris-
oned for years on fabricated charges of tax evasion
and embezzlement.
Chou Chou Namegabe, founder of the South
Kivu Women’s Media Association in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, recorded and broadcast more than
500 testimonies of survivors of sexual violence to high-
light the pervasive use of rape as a tool of war. In re-
taliation, Namegabe faced numerous rape and death
threats herself.
Actually, even reporting on women, not just
being a female reporter, can be deadly. A report by
Reporters Without Borders found that covering wom-
en’s rights, whether the reporter is female or male,
Pressures in Emerging Countries, Page 22
Gender Politics and Transformation
in the South African Newsroom
Research In Depth
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 6 www.mediareporttowomen.com
with the view from Sanef’s 2016 research that
showed that racism and sexism still abound. She
quoted Rabe (2006) that despite a constitution built
on human rights such as anti-racism and anti-
sexism, the data from the Sanef 2006 study showed
us that discriminatory practices, structural inequal-
ities, prejudices, patriarchy and sexism are still
prevalent in South African newsrooms. “This
points to a gap between the statistics conrming
gender equity in the newsroom on the one hand,
and what the qualitative research tells us about
women’s experiences in the newsroom on the oth-
er. Ascertaining perceptions around gender equali-
ty among the journalistic corps can tell us some-
thing about the state of transformation and the
changes that still need to take place in order to tru-
ly transform the South Africa news media and
broader public discourses.” (Rabe 2006).
The aim of the 2017 study was then to as-
sess what progress had been made 10 years later, if
any, after the rst Glass Ceiling Project, and more
than 20 years into democracy. There was another
20-year anniversary happening internationally and
simultaneously. World Editors Forum organizer
Julie Posei wrote in The Media Online in August
2015: “It’s 20 years since an historic UN conference
in Beijing saw 189 countries adopt the Beijing Dec-
laration and Platform for Action, a visionary
roadmap for women’s rights and empowerment.”
However, the International Steering Com-
miee of the Global Alliance on Media and Gender
(GAMAG) expressed concern that progress to-
wards media that support gender equality and
women’s rights objectives remains painfully slow.
“We cannot talk about equality, good governance,
freedom of expression and sustainability when
women are eectively silenced in and through the
media, and where new technologies are used to
undermine the human rights of women and wom-
en journalists,” the commiee’s then chairper-
son Colleen Lowe Morna (also the CEO of Gender
Links in South Africa) declared at the end of the
Commiee’s inaugural meeting in Geneva in 2015.
GAMAG, an initiative of UNESCO, is a network of
500 media organizations and civil society groups
from around the world. It declared 2015 the “year
for action” saying that “the time for simply talking
By Glenda Daniels
Glenda Daniels is an associate
professor in Media Studies at
the University of the Witwa-
tersrand in Johannesburg,
South Africa. She is a feminist
and media freedom activist,
and author of the book: Fight
for Democracy: the ANC
and the Media in South Af-
rica. She chairs the Ethics and
Diversity sub-commiee of the
South African National Editors’ Forum and sits on the
board for the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism.
She was a journalist for many years before she did her
PhD in Political Studies and then joined Wits University
as a researcher and now lecturer.
The South African Editors’ Forum (Sanef) in
2017 re-launched a Glass Ceiling research project,
just over 10 years after the rst one to ascertain if
sexism still existed in the newsrooms today and if
so, what kind. Indeed, what were the obstacles hold-
ing back the advancement of women?
The aim of the research was several-fold: a
quest to look for progress, for an understanding of
aitudes, customs, perceptions and experiences, and
to make some suggestive ndings about whether
there was “backlash.” The glass ceiling is an invisi-
ble but real barrier to advancement of women in the
workplace, where they can be blocked by sexism,
sexist practices, sexual harassment, pregnancy, patri-
archal views and prejudices, in hiring and promo-
tions as well as salary disparities with men. There
can also be feminist gains and then a backlash.
The State of the Newsroom South Africa:
Disruptions Accelerated (Daniels 2014) research
showed that the number of women editors had de-
creased year on year from 2013 to 2014 by 9%, and
the numbers of black women editors decreased even
more. This is deeply concerning, given that not only
are Transformation equity targets in terms of the
country’s laws to redress the imbalances from the
apartheid past not being met, but the newsroom cli-
mate may be retrogressing for women. Academic
researcher Ylva Rodny-Gumede (2015) concurred
www.mediareporttowomen.com 7 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
about gender inequality in and through the news
media has passed.” In the meanwhile, a new threat
against women has emerged. Posei identied
cyber misogyny as the latest form of overt discrimi-
nation women worldwide are suering. Her re-
search showed that women were more trolled than
anyone else. A recent UK study of Twier abuse,
Posei observed, targeting celebrities, found that
“Journalism is the only category where women re-
ceived more abuse than men, with female journal-
ists and TV news presenters receiving roughly
three times as much abuse as their male counter-
parts.”
Again, we ask: is there a backlash against
women everywhere in the world, of which South
Africa is obviously an example? Cyber misogyny,
expressed via online sexual harassment through to
stalking and threat of violence, is a genuine psycho-
logical – and potentially physical – risk to safety of
women journalists. It is also a threat to the active
participation of women in civil society debate, fos-
tered by news publishers, through online comment-
ing platforms and their social media channels, ac-
cording to the media gender activist.
Susan Faludi (1991) argued that a backlash
is also a historical trend, generally recurring when
it appears that women have made substantial gains
in their eorts to obtain equal rights — a counter-
assault to halt or reverse the hard-won gains in the
quest for equality. McRobbie (2004) explains the
Faludi backlash as a concerted, conservative re-
sponse to the achievements of feminism. Michele
Weldon (2014) assistant professor emerita of North-
western University’s Medilll School and director of
Medill Public Thought Leaders, noted: “If you have
a newsroom that’s predominantly male, then the
story ideas, source choices and way a story is pre-
sented will reect that point of view. When that
happens, you get a skewed view of the world and
that’s not what the world is like.”
In South Africa, two reports from 2013 –
the Report on Transformation (2013) and the Gen-
der Links report – showed that not only are men in
the majority in terms of media ownership, on
boards and in management positions, but that
women predominate in media studies (64%) yet
constitute only 40% of media employees and 34% of
media managers, according to Lucinda Jordaan
(2017).
Lowe Morna felt that the major concerns
are in relation to the dierent occupational levels
women are found in. “Women may be the majority
of news anchors or presenters; however, they are
not equally represented in the decision-making roles
of the media houses they operate in. But the repre-
sentation of women working in the media is far
much beer than voices of women represented in the
media.” Various local and international studies bear
this out. Gender Links’ latest gender and media re-
search, published in 2015, revealed that women in
South African media make up only 20% of news
sources – the same percentage as the 2010 study.
“There are dierences in representation of
women sources in print, radio and television media.
Television has the highest proportion of women as
sources at 25%, followed by radio at 22%. Print has
the lowest proportion of female sources at 21%,” ar-
gued Lowe Morna. With this background, let us turn
to the most recent research.
In 2017 the main research questions were:
Is there a glass ceiling for women in the media in SA?
What are the obstacles in the way of women becoming sen-
ior editors?
What are the discriminatory practices women reporters
encounter in their jobs?
Are there pay disparities between men and women report-
ers/editors?
Are there gender policies in the newsrooms?
Theoretically speaking, this report argues
that if women’s voices are not injected into media at
the senior level, there is insucient diversity and the
same structures of patriarchal domination will prolif-
erate. The loss of power in women’s numbers across
the board of traditional media’s levels of ownership,
management, editors, and journalists in the news-
rooms constitutes a crisis for diversity. Theoretically
the work is grounded in radical democracy, which en-
dorses diversity, plurality of views, voices from the
margins and robust ghts and contestations. Howev-
er, if the majority of voices and decision makers in
the media and newsrooms are male, then this kind of
democracy does not exist.
Radical democracy is apposite because when
applied to journalism it argues that for democracy to
deepen, there should be robust ghts and contesta-
tions. The media and its stories should be diverse,
with as many voices as possible for inclusivity and
plurality. Otherwise, it is just the same old male elites
talking the same language to each other. Bearing
these denitions for the main research question on
South African women in the newsroom, this research
then deploys the theories of radical democracy to
highlight the need for diversity and plurality in the
media by bringing in voices from the margins.
Research In Depth
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 8 www.mediareporttowomen.com
Chantal Moue (2009) argued for voices from
the margins and for robust disagreements to deepen
democracy, but also in the same Derridean decon-
struction points out that perfect democracy cannot
exist; it’s always a democracy to come, a process, so
this research will argue that feminism is yet to be real-
ized. In this radical democracy conception we must
accept conict, dierence and pluralism as well as
division as part of power relations, politics and socie-
ty. This theoretical formulation has relevance here in
so far as the striving for equality for women in the
workplace of the South African newsroom does not
end; there is no nal realization. But could we be ex-
periencing a backlash in the Faludian sense?
Amanda Gouws (2017), a gender researcher
and political analyst from Stellenbosch University in
Cape Town, argued that women are experiencing a
backlash in all three continents in the global south in
the last three years as a consequence of neo-liberal
capitalism – the overarching global political frame-
work which has not created justice and equality for
those on the margins of mainstream politics and eco-
nomics.
Since the 2006 Sanef Glass Ceiling survey
there is lile research to show whether the status of
women has improved. In addition to the number of
women editors decreasing it must be pointed out that
the number of women reporters or juniors in the
newsroom was on par with that of males. Subsequent
newsroom research has not shown many changes
(Finlay 2015-2016). This is deeply concerning given
that not only are Transformation equity targets, ac-
cording to the Report on Transformation (2013) not
being met, but they are retrogressing -- a backlash, if
you like. The study here builds on Gender Links
work by Pat Made and Lowe Morna (2013) and San-
dra Banjac and Letabo Dibetso (2013) on the continent
as well as the feminist theorizing work of Angela
McRobbie internationally (2005).
Methodology for the 2017 Glass Ceiling survey
Mixed methods were deployed, partially the-
oretical and conceptual, but mainly a new quantita-
tive survey was conducted in March and April 2017.
This research can be considered dipstick as it’s not
comprehensive but it does give an indication of
where women are in the 2017 newsroom. Methodo-
logically, the research will use concepts from radical
democracy, and a Sanef survey to draw some reec-
tions about whether there is a backlash against wom-
en and whether a glass ceiling exists.
Some of the background research used in-
cluded the Sanef/ Gender Links as well as the Report
on the Transformation of Print and Digital Media
(2013). The research also made use of three State of
the Newsroom research volumes: 2013, 2014, and
2015-16. Qualitatively, comments from the Glass
Ceiling 2017 give meaning to the gures.
The unit of analysis was the newsroom
across newspapers, radio, television and online in
South Africa, although the majority were traditional
media. The main area surveyed was Gauteng be-
cause the majority of newsrooms were in that prov-
ince, although other provinces of the Western Cape,
Eastern Cape, KZN, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, for ex-
ample, were also surveyed. There was a total of 150
participants, a lile more than the 2006 survey but a
comparable number.
What the Sanef 2006 Survey Showed
The 2006 Sanef research titled: The Glass
Ceiling and Beyond: Realities, Challenges and Strate-
gies for South African Media, which had 120 journal-
ists/editors’ participants, showed that sexism, patri-
archy, and prejudice dominated the newsroom cul-
ture. In addition to those, the following key words
liered the discourse: marginalization, historical fact,
structural inequalities, family commitments, cultural
factors, social injustices, lack of support, discrimina-
tory practices, and lack of career planning for wom-
en journalists by media managers. In 2006, some of
the comments that emerged regarding obstacles to
women’s advancement were: we are living in a male
hegemonic society; there are stereotypical percep-
tions; women had “family responsibilities” (culture);
women might be prone to “emotional instability”;
and “women were not competent.”
In 2006: What Did Women in the Newsroom Say?
Women journalists are gender sensitive deal-
ing with day to day news events
A critical mass of women in senior positions
will lead to a change (although, various studies
showed women often perpetuate existing male con-
structs of the newsroom environment – also indicat-
ed by some of the respondents.)
Sexism is experienced as feeling like “lesser
citizens”: “There’s a sense that many men do often
still feel they are superior to women. No amount of
workshops is going to change this ingrained sense of
entitlement.”
www.mediareporttowomen.com 9 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
less than men. More males said there were no pay dis-
parities. Even though this result does not seem to be
conclusive, in the comments section, women said they
were aware of the fact that males of the same experience
and qualications earned more than them.
What about gender policies? The majority of
participants, 60%, said there were no gender policies in
the newsroom. When we combine this with the “don’t
know” 20%, we get a total of 80% and so can easily as-
certain that that there is a lack of awareness of gender
policies in the newsroom. More men than women said
there were no gender policies in the newsroom. Ai-
tudes toward balancing sourcing with female experts as
well as male sources were also measured.
More male journalists than women journalists
said “no” to making an eort to call on women experts.
Male journalists and editors go out of their way to call
women experts for comments only 30% of the time. A
total of 58% said no, they did not go out of their way to
Racism: “Preferences and privileges enjoyed
by white men” still prevail, but also: the “white old
boys’ club seems to be replaced by a black old boys’
club.”
Prejudice and discrimination: “Prejudice is still
a factor, especially the higher you go – overt and cov-
ert.”
Patronized: “Women are patronized and their
opinions do not appear to be taken as seriously as
those of men. This can be subtle, like jokes made at
their expense when they give their opinions, or teasing.
It seems friendly and even aectionate, but it is actual-
ly demeaning.”
Just over 10 years later, some things have
changed, but not much, and some things have become
worse, which could be the backlash. If the number of
women editors decreased from 2013 to 2014 as shown
in the State of the Newsroom report, it could be a back-
lash against the small gains that women made in post-
apartheid South Africa.
In 2017: There was No Glass Ceiling, BUT
This research had 150 participants, both men
and women who were all editorial sta (journalists and
editors) in newsrooms from dierent parts of the coun-
try.
There are no obstacles for women in the
newsroom. A surprising nding was that a huge ma-
jority of the participants (both men and women) said
there were no obstacles to women in the newsroom,
79%. (By a small majority, just over 50%, the partici-
pants were women.) We can also deduce from this that
if the majority of the participants were women, then
the majority of women said they were not experiencing
any obstacles to advancement in the newsroom. The
majority of men, more than 90%, said there were no
obstacles for women, but 70% of women said the same.
Are there perceived pay disparities between
men and women? This result was a mixed bag of all
the results so far, as it was spread out, with No, rst;
No, there were no gender pay disparities; to “don’t
know if there are” to “Yes, there are.” From the spread-
out nature of the result we can deduce that the majori-
ty, (nearly 60%) of both men and women think there
may well be pay disparities between the genders, with
the assumption that males earn more. This result is
calculated from the fact that 42% said there were no
pay disparities.
Are there dierences in men and women’s
views about whether there were pay disparities? Un-
surprisingly, women seem to be aware that they earn
Research In Depth
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 10 www.mediareporttowomen.com
call on women experts. Only 6% said they went out
of their way to call women expert
“sometimes.” (Other” in the male/female/other line
in the table refers to respondents who prefer gender
uidity and not be referred to as male or female.)
Some reective conclusions: Yes, a backlash,
but what of the future?
In some ways the comment section was as
instructive as the overall result that 79% said there
was no glass ceiling in the newsroom. Yes, there was
no glass ceiling but yes, there was sexism in the stere-
otypes that persist, and the old boys’ clubs, or net-
works, which exclude women. So, while the majority,
including women, said there was no glass ceiling, in
the comments section many said the old boys’ club
was as evident as ever, with the numbers of women
editors having decreased as well. The research also
shows that there is some backlash against women,
from both the empirical and anecdotal evidence.
The majority of comments (see adjacent pan-
el) however, can be classied as non-sexist or neutral,
combined total at 80%. In comparison with the sur-
vey in 2006 there is less passion in the comments by
women. It is suggestive of a sense of resignation.
However, this can be aributed to the fact that per-
haps women do not experience as much discrimina-
tion as they did in 2006, or it can be aributed to the
fact that women have accepted that sexism exists.
Women in 2017 appeared to be aware they earned
less than men of the same experience and qualica-
tions.
The political and social background to the
newsroom survey is that sexism and abuse of women
is being “called out” in society broadly – and widely
exposed in the media – from the international #metoo
campaign to greater reporting of local incidents of
rape to assault – for example, the deputy minister of
education’s Mduduzi Manana’s assault of two wom-
en in a nightclub. Whether there were male editors or
women editors heading the news coverage, the issue
received widespread coverage throughout main-
stream media such as newspapers and television, to
digital media platforms and social media.
The comments from the women who partici-
pated in the survey show that sexism was subtle for
some, for others it was overt, and yet for others, there
was questioning about why this survey was happen-
ing in the rst place. It can be concluded that news-
room participants mostly, did not believe the Glass
Ceiling existed in the newsroom but that sexism and
Comments from the 2017 survey
As with most industries women journalists face sexism.
The number of female editors appears to still be skewed,
and the "boys’ club" is still going strong. However, we
have, at our newspaper, a decent representation of wom-
en in managerial or senior positions.
What I've realized is that many people (women) are ste-
reotyped. They have that mentality of undermining. If
you look in the industry we have few women who are
writing or reporting sports. It's because we have in-
stilled that sports is for men and women follow that
which is not true.
We need more women in the newsroom especially in
politics. It is a pity that some or most of them do not like
the newsroom or reporting hard news or politics.
There denitely is space for more women leaders in the
newsroom, particularly black women.
I believe there is very lile eort to seek out women
experts on issues such as politics, economics and law. It
may also be that women professionals in these elds do
not avail themselves to comment.
In this newsroom we are treated the same. Women get
the same opportunities as men. There is no special treat-
ment for either of the two. However, when women go
cover a dangerous story they must be accompanied by
someone.
There are still very few women editors in the SABC
newsroom.
I believe we have a good gender balance, and racial
transformation is more important right now, especially
in gatekeeping roles such as section editors and subs.
SANEF needs to get lawyers for journalists who need
them. Journalists need legal support in times when we
are targeted by protesters, police and other entities.
Why are we still doing these kinds of surveys?
I think women who want top positions are able to get
them if they demonstrate the right abilities, leadership
is not for everyone. Some people may display such qual-
ities but do not necessarily want those jobs…
Sexism can be very subtle -- I do have a sense that men
are favored in this organization but in an informal, club-
by way, a kind of mutual respect that prevails amongst
men and entails a slightly patronizing aitude to wom-
en. I suppose it would be expressed mainly through
men being considered rst for opportunities rather than
women being specically excluded.
www.mediareporttowomen.com 11 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
References
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Daniels, G (2013) State of the Newsroom, SA: Disruptions and
Transitions. University of the Witwatersrand. Journalism Depart-
ment. Johannesburg.
Daniels, G (2014) State of the Newsroom, SA: Disruptions Acceler-
ated. University of the Witwatersrand. Journalism Department.
Johannesburg.
Faludi, S (1991) Backlash: the undeclared war against American
women. Crown Publishing Group. New York.
Finlay, A (2015-2016) State of the Newsroom South Africa Inside/
Outside. University of the Witwatersrand. Journalism Department.
Johannesburg.
Gouws, A (2017). Interview on eNCA. 8th August 2017. Johannes-
burg.
International Women’s Media Foundation (2011) Report on the
Status of Women in News Media (2011) Knight Foundation. Wash-
ington.
Jordaan, L (2017) Cracking the Glass Ceiling or falling trhough the
cracks. The Media Online. 17 July 2017.
Made, Pat and Lowe Morna, Colleen (2013) Glass Ceilings. Gender
Links. Johannesburg.
McRobbie, A (2004) Feminist Media Studies Vol. 4, No. 3, 2004
ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/04/030255-10. Taylor &
Francis.
Moue, C. (2009) The Democratic Paradox. Verso. London, New
York.
Posei, J. (2015) Trends in the newsroom: Business of Gender
Equality. The Media Online. 19 August, 2015.
Rabe, L. 2006. Glass ceiling, concrete ceiling, Rhodes Journalism
Review 26: 20–21.
Report on the Transformation of Print and Digital Media Transfor-
mation Task Team. (2013) Report on the Transformation of Print
and Digital Media. Johannesburg.
Rodny-Gumede, Y. (2015) Male and Female Journalists’ Percep-
tions of their Power to inuence news agendas and the public dis-
courses, Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication
Theory and Research, 41:2, 206-219.
South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef). 2006. The Glass
Ceiling and Beyond: Realities, Challenges and Strategies for South
African media. Johannesburg. South Africa. Hp://www.sanef.
Weldon, M. (2014) Women journalists in the newsroom. hp://
www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2014/02/women-
journalists-in-the-newsroom.html#sthash.nlfGUaUk.dpuf.
stereotypes persisted. In addition, there was asym-
metry between men and women in terms of their
knowledge about, and the importance they placed
on, gender policies and pay equity. The fact that the
majority of respondents said that there was no glass
ceiling means that newsroom occupants feel that
there are no obvious structural barriers to them en-
tering the top echelons of the newsrooms.
It is unlikely that the same scenario as exist-
ed for this survey will persist by the year 2027. For
one, this survey was conducted mainly among tradi-
tional media such as newspapers, television and ra-
dio while start-ups and digital media – for example
Hu Post SA and Daily Vox -- are sectors where it
appears that mainly young women dominated in
2017. This could be a trend that will continue.
Young women have gained feminist con-
dence in recent years, 2015-2017, given for example,
the protests with the hashtag #men are trash, the ant-
rape protests at President Jacob Zuma’s election
speech in 2016, among other anti-patriarchy activ-
isms that we don’t have the space to elaborate on
here. So, while indeed an old boys’ network was ac-
tive in newsrooms in 2006 and 2017, by 2027 there
may now be as many young girls’ networks as there
are old boys’ networks.
In the same way that there was an overlap
with the 2006 data results on the Glass Ceiling and a
shift in awareness by 2017, so in 2027 a similar dy-
namic is likely to be the case. It is more than likely
that by 2027 not only will the Mananas (and Harvey
Weinsteins) of the world be named and shamed but
also jailed because of pressure from society broadly,
which will be reected in the media. As sexist stereo-
typing, patriarchal norms and values including vio-
lence against women are more frequently challenged,
awareness grows, and so, the most optimistic scenar-
io for women in future newsrooms is that their voices
will be more mainstreamed rather than sidelined.
Women are likely to become more militant
about women’s voice and space in a democratic soci-
ety full of robust debate, which should be reected in
the media and newsroom, towards a radical democ-
racy.
So, side by side, there is a backlash against
feminist gains of the past, which this report shows,
but at the same time there is a rising activism around
sexism (which requires further research). The good
news is that no one disagreed that strong women’s
voices are needed in newsrooms and in media prod-
ucts, for a greater radical democracy.
Handmaids and Duggars: The Signicance of
Christian Patriarchy in Pop Culture
Research In Depth
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 12 www.mediareporttowomen.com
as we watched the extreme right-wing faction in the
Republican party grow bolder and bolder with anti-
woman, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant
rhetoric. The internet was abuzz with threats posed by
the new administration to women’s rights and wom-
en’s health care. My students said they felt like Gilead
could really happen America now that Trump was
president. What surprised me was how many people
seemed to think these extremist views were coming
out of nowhere. The Handmaid’s Tale-like beliefs of
far-right religious groups, particularly the Christian
patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, have steadily
gained ground in American over the last three dec-
ades, complete with popular culture and news media
representation if we know what we are looking for.
This research examines narrative television, reality
television, and news media headlines from the 2010s
that share the common thread of Christian Patriarchy
and Quiverfull doctrine.
Gilead and American
Politics
For those who
may not have read the
book or seen the Hulu
series, The Handmaid’s
Tale Atwood envisions a
post-apocalyptic world in
our very near future. It is
a future in which human
reproductive rates have
slowed and a religious
civil war has split Ameri-
ca into a new state, the
conservative Christian
Republic of Gilead, and other dissenting groups.
White women who can bear children are required to
do so and the contraceptive and abortion practices of
the past are redened as an ultimate transgression
against the state. Although the Hulu adaptation fea-
tures actors of color in key roles, Atwood’s original
text makes it clear that only white people will allowed
to reap the benets of Gilead, based on an interpreta-
tion of the story in Genesis where Noah’s son Ham
and his descendants are cursed (Atwood, 83-4). The
curse has been interpreted as the origin of black skin.
By Anna Brecke
Anna Brecke earned her PhD in Eng-
lish from the University of Rhode
Island and holds MA degrees in Eng-
lish and Gender/Cultural Studies
from Simmons College. She teaches
in the Cornerstone Program at
Stonehill College and is an Executive
Board member and Women’s and
Feminist Studies area co-chair for the
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association.
Her research focuses on gender representation in popular
media from the nineteenth century through today.
The 2016 election caused many of us teach-
ing in the Humanities to rethink our syllabi in order
to emphasize pressing human rights issues in the
literature and media we planned to teach in the com-
ing semesters. Like
many of my colleagues
across the country, I
added Margaret At-
wood’s enduring tale of
white, western, Chris-
tian extremism, The
Handmaid’s Tale, to my
Spring 2017 classes and
incorporated the March
2017 release of Hulu’s
six-part adaptation into
class activities and dis-
cussion. As class, media,
and internet discussions
of The Handmaid’s Tale
grew over the months of
the Spring semester and the course of Hulu series, a
common thread emerged in how many new viewers
and readers reacted to the texts. Although Atwood
says nothing in the novel is wholly invented, and the
uncanny upset we feel when experiencing Gilead
comes from the fact that its horrors have happened
somewhere in the world, there was a kind of incre-
dulity in people who were seeing parallels between
the book and Hulu adaptation, and real life.
The Handmaid’s Tale felt particularly timely
The Handmaid’s Tale, on Hulu
not conceive are at fault and men are the victims of
their unwillingness to produce heathy children, these
right-wing pundits and politicians place the respon-
sibility for conception on women while trying to leg-
islate away their ability to regulate their reproductive
systems that are not uncommon in conservative
Christian circles where sexual education is a taboo.
Ties between a specically American brand
of conservative evangelical Christianity and At-
wood’s imagining of religious legalism in Gilead are
clearly outlined in the novel. The text, originally pub-
lished in 1985, hints that Gilead was a product of the
late 1970s and 1980s televangelism trend that birthed
Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL Club. The charac-
ter of Wife Serena Joy was clearly based on Tammy
Faye Bakker. Atwood’s nameless narrator remembers
“Sometimes I would watch the Growing Souls Gos-
pel Hour, where they would tell Bible stories for chil-
dren and sing hymns. One of the women was called
Serena Joy…. She was ash blond, petite, with a snub
nose and huge blue eyes she’d turn upwards during
hymns. She could smile and cry at the same time, one
tear sliding gracefully down her cheek, as if on
cue” (Atwood, 16). The description matches the fa-
mous videos of Tammy Faye smiling through her
tears on PTL Club while her mascara rolls down her
face. The 2017 adaptation retains these roots while
seeming to nod towards to the Christian Patriarchy
and Quiverfull movements that have grown to prom-
inence in conservative Christian circles over the three
decades since the book was originally published.
Christian Patriarchy
Christian Patriarchy is not denomination
specic, although adherents do tend to come from or
be involved with fundamentalist evangelical sects. It
also has no centralized leadership, but names con-
nected with the movement are known to consumers
of Christian media. The Quiverfull movement simi-
larly has no centralized leadership, but takes its name
from Psalm 127, which reads “Lo, children are a her-
itage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his
rewards. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man,
so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that
hath his quiver full of them” (Psalm 127: 3-5, The
King James Version). Quiverfull followers believe
any use of birth control is not just a sin, but a sign of
insucient faith in God. Both Christian Patriarchy
and the Quiverfull movement are characterized by
large families adhering to traditional gender roles,
homeschooling, and a mistrust and avoidance of
www.mediareporttowomen.com 13 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
The Children of Ham theory was used to justify slav-
ery in the United States, and formed the basis of the
Mormon Church’s historic exclusion of people of col-
or, although they have reversed that policy since the
1980s. Gilead’s reproductive hierarchy also comes
from an interpretation of Genesis.
In Genesis 30, Rachel and Jacob are unable to
conceive, so Rachel uses her “Handmaid” Billah as a
surrogate to conceive Jacob’s son. The text reads
“And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no chil-
dren [she] said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I
die….And she said, behold my maid Billah go in unto
her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may
also have children by her. And she gave him Billah
her handmaid to wife…and Billah conceived and
bare Jacob a son” (Genesis 30:1-5, The King James
Version). Whether Billah is willing and consents to
this arrangement is not addressed in the text. She is
used as a vessel to carry children for the couple with
higher socio-economic status. Atwood’s Gilead takes
the phrase “and she shall bear upon my knees” quite
literally and handmaids assigned to infertile couples
operate as a conduit between husband and wife in
the conception ceremony. Like Billah, Handmaids
have no right to refuse or consent. Conception and
childbirth are their duty and failure or rebellion are
met with Old Testament punishment. Gilead’s law
does not allow for the possibility of male sterility so
the burden of conception is placed entirely on wom-
en.
Gilead’s intentional ignorance of human re-
productive science is reminiscent of anti-choice Re-
publican rhetoric we have seen more and more over
the last few years. For instance, Congressman Todd
Akin’s 2012 statement that “If it’s a legitimate rape,
the female body has ways to try to shut the whole
thing down,” implying that somehow the human
uterus can determine the intention of a sperm and
only conceive if the sperm is virtuous (Moore, 2012).
Or conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s
tirade against Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke,
in which he appeared to confuse oral contraception
with the morning-after pill, saying he wasn’t going to
pay for sluts to take a pill every time they have sex
(Lowder, 2012). Fluke’s statements were given in a
congressional seing as part of a Democratic defense
of the Aordable Care Act requirement that employ-
ers cover birth control as part of health insurance.
Whether they come from genuine or willful igno-
rance, statements like these from Akin and Limbaugh
reveal dangerous misconceptions about the function
of the human reproductive system. Like the assump-
tion made in Atwood’s Gilead that women who do
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 14 www.mediareporttowomen.com
Research In Depth
ing mainstream politics through the Republican Par-
ty, called Dominionism. “Dominionism is the theo-
cratic idea that regardless of theological view, means,
or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise
dominion over every aspect of society by taking con-
trol of political and cultural institutions” (Clarkson,
2016). Conservative Dominionism emphasizes politi-
cal involvement as a Christian calling and encour-
ages followers of the doctrine to become politically
active at a young age (Blake, 2014). Vice President
Mike Pence and Senator Ted Cruz have both been
linked with Dominionism, although as they have
spent more time in the political spotlight, both men
have become more vague when discussing their reli-
gious views. San Francisco Bay Area housing advo-
cate, Quiverfull survivor, and activist Kieryn Dark-
water wrote about their experience being groomed to
take over the government through Dominionist doc-
trine in a 2017 article for Autostraddle titled “I was
trained for the Culture Wars in homeschool, awaiting
someone like Mike Pence as a Messiah.” Darkwater
writes, “I grew up in the far-right evangelical con-
servative (Christofascist) movement; specically, I
was homeschooled and my parents were part of a
subculture called Quiverfull, whose aim is to out-
breed everyone for Jesus. I spent my teen years being
a political activist. I was taught by every pastor I en-
countered that it was our job as Christians to out-
breed the secularists (anyone not a far-right evangeli-
cal Protestant) and take over the government
through sheer numbers. I was part
of TeenPact, Generation Joshua and my local Teen-
age Republicans.” TeenPact and Generation Joshua
are conservative Christian youth organizations dedi-
cated to training young people for community and
political leadership roles. The Generation Joshua, or
GenJ, mission statement is “to assist parents to raise
up the next generation of Christian leaders and citi-
zens, equipped to positively inuence the political
processes of today and tomorrow” (What is GenJ?,
2018). Political and civic community leadership is the
main goal of organizations like these that are de-
signed to “raise” or “train” young people in Domin-
ionist principles.
The casual 19 Kids and Counting viewer may
not know that family Patriarch Jim Bob served two
terms as an Arkansas state senator from 1998 to 2003.
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History
and Culture, it was Jim Bob’s failed 2002 bid for a
national senate seat that took him out of politics and
into the entertainment industry. Candidate Jim Bob’s
photo ops brought his large and photogenic family to
mainstream American culture and media. A name
well-recognized as connected with both these move-
ments is Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life
Principles, which hosts seminars and conferences,
oers online programs, and distributes publications
to instruct followers in strictly policed gendered roles
according to a militaristic adherence to certain bible
passages, or legalism. Legalism, which is not recog-
nized by mainstream American Christian groups, can
be loosely dened as ignoring the Gospel in favor of
a works-based model of salvation based on the Old
Testament.
Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull followers
frequently practice homeschooling, with varying cur-
ricula. Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute Inter-
national oers “a home education program” that
“provides curriculum and training to support parents
in raising their children to love the Lord Christ Jesus,
reason wisely based on the principles of Scripture,
have world-changing purpose in view, and give Bib-
lical answers to the needs of our day” (original text
bolded, Advanced Training Institute, 2018). In 2015 a
YouTube user who goes by the name Tartalon posted
a short interview with a homeschool family, self-
described as “so far right [they] don’t even believe in
birth control” (The Eects of Christian Homeschool-
ing, 2015). In the video parents stand with their six
identically-dressed daughters, ranging from infant to
middle-school aged, and answer questions about
their home school curriculum. When the oldest girl
cannot answer basic multiplication questions, 6 times
6 and 5 times 5, her mother intervenes saying “we’ve
studied Genesis to Joshua, not so hard on the math
facts” (The Eects of Christian Homeschooling, 2015).
Like the family in this video, some Christian home-
schoolers teach only the Bible. Others homeschool in
groups using Christian organization-developed ma-
terials and textbooks from conservative, anti-science,
companies like Gothard’s Advanced Training Insti-
tute. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education found
that 1.2 million children were home schooled and of
that number, 62% of parents claimed a desire to pro-
vide religious education as their primary reason for
home schooling (Statistics about non-public educa-
tion in the United States). The most visible face of
religion-inspired homeschooling in the U.S. is the
face of TLC’s Duggar family.
The Duggar Men
One parallel between real life Christian Patri-
archy and Gilead is the movement’s goal of inltrat-
the aention of a Discovery Channel documentary
team and eventually tabloid TV pioneers TLC oered
the Duggar family a series. It appears that oldest son
Josh Duggar was being groomed for politics until
information surfaced in 2015 that he had molested
his sisters as an adolescent, and that he had an ac-
count on the adultery hook-up site Ashley Madison.
Josh has been photographed with Republican heavy
hiers like Jeb Bush, Sarah
Palin, Mike Huckabee,
and Rand Paul. Before the
various scandals surfaced,
he worked for the con-
servative PAC, the Family
Research Council. Josh’s
molestation of four of his
younger sisters is what led
to the cancellation of 19
Kids and Counting, and
the way the family han-
dled his oense at the
time it happened is indicative of their adherence to
the teachings of Bill Gothard and the IBLP.
The Duggar Women
In addition to the call to have as many chil-
dren as possible, women in Christian Patriarchy and
Quiverfull families live under behavioral restrictions
that often limit their interactions to home and church
life. They are discouraged from aending secular
college and working outside the home, which curtails
exposure to mainstream American culture. In At-
wood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the nameless narrator
hungers for reading material and television news,
which are denied to her because of her Handmaid
status. Prior to the Hulu adaptation of Atwood’s nov-
el, the most visible pop culture image of this kind of
feminine experience was Michelle Duggar, of 19 Kids
and Counting, and her daughters. The Duggar family
appeared in their TLC series, which began as 17 Kids
and Counting in 2008, over the course of seven years
and the birth of two more children. Although the
Duggars have denied that they are a Quiverfull fami-
ly, patriarch Jim Bob’s association with Bill Gothard,
the IBLP, coupled with the sheer number of children
in the family, paint a dierent picture (Tauber, 2015).
According to the Duggar family website, when
Michelle and Jim were rst married, Michelle took
oral contraception but after a miscarriage she and Jim
“talked with a Christian medical doctor and read the
ne print in the contraceptives package. They found
that taking the pill you can get pregnant and then
miscarry. They were grieved! They were Christians!
They were pro-life! They realized that their selsh
actions had taken the life of their child”( About Jim
Bob and Michelle). As anyone who has taken the pill
knows, oral contraceptives do not work by causing
miscarriages. They prevent eggs from implanting in
the uterus, eectively
blocking pregnancy from
occurring. This passage
from the Duggar Family
website implies that the
pill causes miscarriages
and alludes to anti-choice
propaganda that, like
Rush Limbaugh’s state-
ments about Sandra
Fluke, falsely claim hor-
monal birth control causes
chemically induced abor-
tion.
The section on their site about their back-
ground continues by saying that Jim Bob and
Michelle feel “God has opened many doors for them
to share that children are a blessing from the
Lord!” (About Jim Bob and Michelle). The emphasis
used here on children as a “blessing,” reminiscent of
Psalm 127, remains a constant message across the
Duggar media empire. Additional clues to the Dug-
gar beliefs can be seen in the appearance of female
family members. While the women and girls of the
Duggar clan dress in clothing you might see at the
local mall, there are clues in their appearance that the
family adheres to the Christian Patriarchy tenet of
modesty or modesty culture. Necklines are high and
sleeves are required. Skirts fall well below the knee
and the hair is kept long. Even the youngest girls
wear shirts and leggings or pants under dresses.
Modesty culture requires that women dress in ways
that will keep their bodies from being a temptation to
men.
Modesty Culture
Like Atwood’s Handmaids, with their full
body robes in dangerous don’t-touch-me red, women
who are raised in Christian Patriarchy are taught that
it is their responsibility to protect their bodies and
their virtue at all costs. Under this kind of modesty
culture practiced as a part of Christian Patriarchy,
women are considered belongings of their father un-
www.mediareporttowomen.com 15 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
Research in Depth
til they have gone through a courtship process and
are transferred through marriage to their husbands.
Courtship, unlike dating, is only conducted in the
presence of family chaperones and with the woman’s
father’s permission. Feminist critic Jessica Valenti has
likened modesty, or purity, culture to a Christian
version of rape culture. Like rape culture, modesty
culture teaches a woman that sexual assault is her
fault, that a more modest woman would have been
protected. But more insidiously it teaches men that
sexual thoughts and sexual acts are the same thing.
For example, in 2013 dental assistant Melissa Nelson
was red from her job after 10 years in the same
oce because the Fort Dodge, Iowa dentist she
worked for found her too aractive, and a threat to
his marriage. Nelson’s boss, Dr. James Knight,
reached this decision after consulting with his wife
and his pastor. At no point in time did Melissa Nel-
son, a married mother of two, express an interest in
Knight, but under the auspices of modesty culture, it
was still her fault that he had sexual thoughts about
her. News outlets at the time reported Knight
warned [Nelson], "if you see my pants bulging, you'll
know your clothes are too revealing” and said that if
Nelson and her husband did not regularly have sex it
was “like having a Lamborghini in the garage and
never driving it” (Strauss, 2013). Her consent in this
situation was not required for Knight, his wife, and
their pastor to nd her guilty of misconduct. Bill Go-
thard describes this type of situation as
“defrauding,” as an aractive woman who fails to be
eectively modest has “defrauded” a man because
her body led him to think about having sex. Accord-
ing to the IBPL website, “to defraud another person
is to stir up in them desires that cannot be righteous-
ly satised” (How does courtship work?). A woman
can defraud a man by the way that she dresses, talks,
or acts, with or without the intention to aract him.
Here there seems to be a clear intersection between
Christian modesty culture and secular rape culture.
Modesty culture is likely also what helped
Josh Duggar escape criminal charges when he was
initially found to have assaulted his sisters. The
anonymous blogger behind Diary of an Autodidact, a
practicing aorney in CA who was raised in a Go-
thard community and has worked with fundamental-
ist families in sexual assault cases, has shared several
images on his blog of internal documents in the Go-
thard curriculum. An excerpt from an IBLP text ex-
plaining how immodest behavior on the part of an
infant and his young sisters, can have led their teen-
aged older brother to commit sexual assault later in
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 16 www.mediareporttowomen.com
life. The young man quoted in the IBLP materials
says “modesty was a factor. It was not at the level it
should have been in my family. It was not uncom-
mon for younger sisters to come out of the bath na-
ked or with a towel. They would…run around the
house…until my mother or sisters got around to
dressing them. Changing my younger sisters’ dia-
pers when they were really lile may not have been
a big thing, but it did not have to be that way (if only
we had applied Levitical Law)” (Modesty Culture
Part 4: The Concept of "Defrauding" and Rape Cul-
ture, 2014). Equally disturbing is the Gothard-
approved Christian counseling method for dealing
with victims of sexual assault, which emphasizes
that the abused may be at fault for failing to be ap-
propriately modest. Although I cannot claim with
certainty that this was the counseling program Josh
Duggar went through after sexually assaulting his
sisters, the public statements made by the family ref-
erence Christian counseling at the Gothard-run Insti-
tute in Basic Life Principles’ Lile Rock Training
Center, where this type of counseling is almost cer-
tain to be the norm. These teachings on women and
human sexuality are all the more disturbing when
we consider the children growing up in these move-
ments, like Josh Duggar and Kieryn Darkwater, are
also being groomed for political involvement and
Christian Patriarchy activism. However, just be-
cause these movements are becoming more visible
does not mean they are a new subcultural trend.
Quiverfull principles linked to tragedy
Seventeen years ago Andrea Yates drowned
her children because, suering from untreated men-
tal illness and post-partum depression exacerbated
by her husband’s extreme Christian beliefs, she
thought they were destined for hell as a byproduct of
her failure to make them virtuous. Demons spoke to
her and told her their salvation lay in dying before
they could grow up to sin (Cohn, 2012 and Stack,
2002). One might ask, was Andrea Yates a Quiver-
full? Why wasn’t this reported at the time? Because
the Quiverfull movement has no central organiza-
tion, no main church, no visible teacher or leader, it
is not always clear who participates in the movement
and who may simply have a large family. Quiverfull
adherents are also guarded about their beliefs, often
only discussing them with other believers. Yates’
husband, Rusty, was at one time a disciple of
“spiritual mentor Michael Woroniecki, a renegade
minister whose writings fault women for the woes of
tal moratoriums on secular college, arranged marriage
through “courtship” and what amounts to marital
rape. Garrison’s bio states “For many years Vyckie
lived the Quiverfull lifestyle, seeking to have as many
‘blessings’ (babies) as the Lord would allow her. Those
pregnancies were against medical advice and she near-
ly lost her life on several occasions. During those years
she did... all the proper things that fundamental patri-
archy deems a righteous quivering woman should do.
She home schooled, had a newsleer supporting the
principles of the Quiverfull movement, raised obedient
Christian children and submied to her hus-
band” (About NLQ). Now that she has left the move-
ment for good, she hosts her site as a place for Quiver-
full survivors to connect and share their stories.
Unlike Atwood’s Handmaids and Andrea
Yates who came to the movement as an adult, many
NLQs have been born into the movement. They are
“the ones who come after you” referenced by Atwood’s
Aunt Lydia, who tells the novel’s nameless narrator at
the reeducation center “you are a transitional genera-
tion…It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrices
you are expected to make… For the ones who come
after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties
with willing hearts. She does not say: because they will
have no memories of any other way” (Atwood, 117). In
Atwood’s Gilead, we see a plan for the future in which
children raised under this new system have no
knowledge of alternative ways of life. The men in pow-
er in Gilead intend to raise new generations much like
the children who have grown up under Christian Patri-
archy, homeschooled and protected from social interac-
tion with mainstream American culture.
Conclusion
While all of the newsworthy events discussed
here have received media coverage, the connection be-
tween the event itself and the Christian Patriarchy
movement is generally not investigated. Suering un-
der the eects of Christian Patriarchy, Andrea Yates
drowned her children and Josh Duggar assaulted his
sisters, but mainstream media coverage is increasingly
hesitant to make connections between events like these
and the extreme religious beliefs that informed them.
Instead, the blogosphere is a main source for coverage
and ongoing discussion of this once-fringe movement
steadily gaining traction in our politics and culture.
Bloggers raised in these movements, like the anony-
mous author behind Diary of an Autodidact and the
participants on Vyckie Garrison’s NLQ, are particularly
well-positioned to both report and comment on the
www.mediareporttowomen.com 17 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
their children” (Roche, 2002). Under Woroniecki’s
guidance, Rusty came to believe in several recogniza-
ble tenets of Christian Patriarchy. He is quoted as
saying to a counselor trying to help Andrea that
“wives must submit to their husbands” (Stack, 2002).
It was Rusty’s will that Andrea, a former valedictori-
an and RN, continue to homeschool and have more
children after she was diagnosed with severe post-
partum psychosis that led her to aempt suicide on
at least two occasions. After her second suicide
aempt, Andrea was warned not have more children,
but she become pregnant seven weeks after she was
discharged. Another doctor warned Rusty that An-
drea should not be left by herself with the children,
but Rusty believed that it was his wife’s place to raise
and educate them. One of Woroniecki’s pamphlets
found in Rusty’s possession reads, “’The social inter-
action the world tells you is so important is exactly
what you need to protect your children
from’” (Stack, 2002).
He was also insistent that childcare fall en-
tirely on Andrea’s shoulders: During Andrea’s trial a
close friend was quoted as saying that “Rusty Yates
considered child care a woman's responsibility and
refused to help his wife tend the children.” She con-
tinued, "I'm not saying he didn't play with them or
enjoy them, but as far as care for them, he didn't… If
the kids' faces or hands were dirty, he'd say, 'Wait till
your mother comes’” (Stack, 2002). Despite repeated
warnings that pregnancy and childcare were destroy-
ing Andrea’s mental health, under the spiritual guid-
ance of her husband, the Yateses continued to adhere
to Quiverfull beliefs. Today, Andrea is commied for
life to a mental health facility. Rusty divorced her,
remarried, and started a family with another woman
(Cohen, 2012). Media coverage of their tragedy men-
tions Woroniecki’s teachings, Rusty’s subscription to
the extremist Christian newsleer Perilous Times,
and the family’s homeschool ways. But it fails to
make connections among these facts and the oppres-
sive religious movements that are no doubt complicit
in Yates’s killing of her children.
No longer Quivering
Like Atwood’s rebellious Handmaids, Quiv-
erfull and Patriarchy survivors are angry. They write
about their childhoods and adult womanhood in
blogs archived on Vyckie Garrison’s Patheos site No
Longer Quivering (NLQ). They talk about crippled
developmental years because of homeschool isola-
tion, extreme physical abuse, lost futures from paren-
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 18 www.mediareporttowomen.com
lasting eects of involvement with Christian Patriar-
chy. In a social climate where we often hear from the
right that Christians are under aack and there is a
“War on Christmas,” mainstream news outlets ap-
proach any criticism of Christian movements with
caution. We are rarely reminded that Oklahoma city
bomber Timothy McVeigh claimed he was avenging
the destruction of David Koresh’s camp at Waco, or
that Charleston church shooter Dylan Roof was radi-
calized by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a
white supremacist organization founded on conserva-
tive Christian values. Religious extremism was a fac-
tor in both cases, but you would be hard pressed to
nd a news story calling either man a Christian terror-
ist. Blog writers and curators who are not beholden to
ratings and advertising funding are beer positioned
to openly discuss the eects of Christian extremism.
Rhetoric of recent election cycles that caused
so many of us in academia to revisit The Handmaid’s
Tale, coupled with the subsequent changes to social
policy under the Trump administration, has embold-
ened participants in Christian extremist groups that
many American women may not have been previous-
ly aware of. At the very least, increasing visibility
means we need to be paying more aention. The suc-
cess of Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale
and renewed interest in Margaret Atwood’s book that
led to its reappearance on the New York Times best-
sellers’ list has helped draw aention to the increasing
inuence believers in this once-fringe brand of Chris-
tian extremism have over political and social policy
under the current administration and American cul-
ture in general. Last semester, my students were
afraid because it suddenly seemed like Gilead could
really happen here. While I disagree that these are
sudden developments, the fear my students expressed
indicates that we are beginning to pay aention.
References
About Jim Bob and Michelle. The Duggar Family. Retrieved from
hp://www.duggarfamily.com/about.
About NLQ. No Longer Quivering. Retrieved from
hp://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/about/
Advanced Training Institute. (2017). Institute in Basic Life Principles. Re-
trieved from hps://iblp.org/programs/advanced-training-institute.
Atwood, M., (1985) The Handmaid’s Tale. Anchor. 1998.
Blake, Aaron. (2014). The average age of the Democratic House leadership is
64. It’s 53 for Republicans. The Washington Post. Retrieved from
hps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-x/wp/2014/11/18/the-average-
democratic-house-leader-is-11-years-older-than-his-or-her-gop-counterpart/?
noredirect=on&utm_term=.6b9bd086ae.
Clarkson, Frederick. (2016). Dominionism Rising: a theocratic movement
hiding in plain sight. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from
hps://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/08/18/dominionism-rising-a-
theocratic-movement-hiding-in-plain-sight/.
Cohen, Andrew. (2012). 10 Years Later, the Tragedy of Andrea Yates. The
Atlantic. Retrieved
from hps://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/10-years-later-
the-tragedy-of-andrea-yates/254290/
Darkwater, Kieryn. (2017). I was trained for the culture wars in home
school, awaiting someone like Mike Pence as a messiah. Autostraddle.
Retrieved from
hps://www.autostraddle.com/i-was-trained-for-the-culture-wars-in-home-
school-awaiting-someone-like-mike-pence-as-a-messiah-367057/
How does courtship work?. (2018). Institute in Basic Life Principles. Re-
trieved from hps://iblp.org/questions/how-does-courtship-work.
Lowder, J. B., (2012). Has Rush Limbaugh nally gone too far in slut-
shaming Sandra Fluke? Slate. Retrieved from hp://www.slate.com/blogs/
xx_factor/2012/03/02/has_rush_
limbaugh_nally_gone_too_far_in_slut_shaming_sandra_uke_.html
Modesty Culture Part 4: The Concept of "Defrauding" and Rape Culture.
(2014). Diary of an Autodidact. Retrieved from hp://
ddlrts.blogspot.com/2014/05/modesty-culture -part-4-concept-of.html
Moore, L., (2012). Rep. Todd Akin: the statement and the reaction. The New
York Times. Retrieved from hps://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/
politics/rep-todd-akin-legitimate-rape-statement-and-reaction.html
Roche, Timothy. (2002). Andrea Yates, more to the story. TIME. Retrieved
from hp://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445-2,00.html.
Stack, Meghan. (2002). Religious zeal infused Yates' lives, testimony shows.
Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from hp://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/01/
news/mn-30487.
Statistics about non-public education in the United States. U. S. Department
of Education. Retrieved from hps://www2.ed.gov/about/oces/list/oii/
nonpublic/statistics.html
Strauss, Eric. (2013). Iowa woman red for being aractive looks back and
moves on. ABCNews. hp://abcnews.go.com/Business/iowa-woman-red-
aractive-back-moves/story?id=19851803.
Tartalon. The Eects of Christian Homeschooling. [Video File]. Retrieved
from hps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsxlqkO1iV4&feature=youtu.be
Teske, Anastasia. Duggar Family. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History
and Culture. Retrieved from hp://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=7356
Tauber, Michelle. (2015). The Duggars and Quiverfull: Inside the Extreme
Religious Movement That Teaches Children Are 'Weapons in the Culture
War'. People. Retrieved from hp://people.com/tv/duggar-scandal-the-19-
kids-and-counting-stars-connection-to-quiverfull/
Valenti, Jessica. (2009). The purity myth: how America’s obsession with
virginity is hurting young women. Seal Press.
What is GenJ?. (2018). HSLDA’s Generation Joshua. Retrieved from
hps://hsldaaction.org/GenJ/about/what-is-genj.
Does your campus library carry MEDIA REPORT TO
WOMEN? If not, please ask your serials department
to subscribe. Visit our web site at
www.mediareporowomen.com to order directly from
us. We welcome agency-facilitated subs as well!
www.mediareporttowomen.com 19 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
Briey…
Writing in The New Republic, Josephine
Livingstone pulls no punches in her takedown of
women’s magazines and lifestyle websites, excoriat-
ing them for embedding self-improvement market-
ing for women in editorial content rooted in what she
called “a branded version of feminism.” In
“Women’s Media Is A Scam,” she zeroes in on Ren-
ery 29, a website that “combines lifestyle content
(fashion, skincare, diaries, work advice) with inspira-
tional feminist sentiment and an embrace of queer
identities. It also eases up the boundaries of journal-
ism so that the lucrative world of marketing and PR
and branding can seep in at the edges. The combina-
tion sits uneasily. The ‘My Identity’ section, for ex-
ample, currently leads with an article titled ‘How
Fashion Helps These 3 People Express Pride [Paid
Content].’ It’s an ad for H&M, dressed up as an arti-
cle about queer and trans people nding their voice
through clothing. There’s also ‘The Old, Secret Style
Language Of The LGTBQ+ Community,’ a mere click
away from an advertisement by Free People on what
to wear to an outdoor summer concert.” The cozy
relationship between product advertising and wom-
en’s magazine editorial is nothing new, Livingstone
notes, but she emphasizes that “the dierence be-
tween today’s women’s media scam and yesterday’s
is that the advertising is now hiding in ‘native’ con-
tent, and the scummy clickbait is packaged beer.
Instead of siing in a box next to a trashy article
about celebrities, lucrative advertising these days
lurks inside content that simulates ethical, feminist
journalism.” Livingstone’s is a smart, snarky analy-
sis: hps://newrepublic.com/article/150010/womens-
media-scam
Bloomberg’s Riley Grin nds much to like
in more familiar women’s magazine titles such as
Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and others that have
expanded the space they’re giving to political report-
ing. With polling showing women voters are ex-
tremely aentive to political issues, Grin says,
“Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire are look-
ing to capitalize on this new landscape. They’ve all
made political news coverage a priority, while some
are hiring reporters with experience in political jour-
nalism and promoting their content aggressively on
digital platforms. While cosmetics, celebrities and
other lighter fare remain prominent, these magazines
have staked a claim in
the world of hard
news.” Grin pro-
vides a number of ex-
amples of women’s
magazine content tai-
lored to women’s ap-
petite for political cov-
erage, online and in the
traditional print format
here: hps://
www.bloomberg.com/
news/articles/2018-07-
20/in-the-age-of-trump-
ignore-women-s-
magazines-at-your-peril
A study from the College and University
Professional Association for Human Resources
demonstrates that challenges of inequity in the
higher education workforce persist, particularly
for women of color. They appear to experience a
combination of diculties common to White wom-
en and minority men. This inequity can be seen
most clearly in overall median pay, which remains
very low for women of color. At least two factors are
likely contributing to this, the study says. First,
women of color are disproportionately over-
represented in lower-paid positions and underrepre-
sented elsewhere. This challenge is also faced by
minority men, suggesting a connection to race/
ethnicity. Second, pay equity remains a challenge for
women of color across job types — even in higher-
level positions, they are paid considerably less than
White men. This challenge is shared by White wom-
en as well, but not men of color, suggesting that gen-
der is the key factor in pay equity. Women of color
thus experience the intersection of two challenges,
one owing to their gender and the other to their
race/ethnicity. Details are here: hps://
www.cupahr.org/wp-content/uploads/CUPA-HR-
Brief-Women-Of-Color.pdf
Columbia Journalism Review is seeking
experts on the media willing to oer their insights
to journalists looking for diverse sources for com-
ment. CJR has compiled the beginnings of a public
database of women, nonbinary, and people of color
who are experts on the media. The list includes
names and areas of expertise; reporters can email
aneason@cjr.org if they need assistance nding con-
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 20 www.mediareporttowomen.com
voice-over vs. on-screen appearance, main actor vs.
extra.” When it was over, he conceded he’d been
wrong. “The real question, and one he couldn’t an-
swer, was why he’d been seeing a skewed version of
television. Why even a potential slight decline had
felt so personal, and made him so upset,” Hesse
wrote. Read her interesting account here: hps://
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/he-thought
-white-men-were-vanishing-from-tv-i-disagreed-so-
we-conducted-an-experiment/2018/07/18/cc727640-
8905-11e8-8aea-86e88ae760d8_story.html?
utm_term=.2df5c9e00767
Music to my ears? NPR’s All Things Consid-
ered looked into what was being programmed by
major orchestras and noticed a problem: female com-
posers are seldom featured. “The Women's March
and #MeToo movement have helped raise the vol-
ume for women's voices across the country. But one
place where women still struggle to be heard is in
America's symphony halls,” says Tom Huizenga.
“Take a look at which composers the top U.S. orches-
tras are performing in the upcoming season, and you
will nd some surprising dis-
parities. The Chicago Sympho-
ny Orchestra will be present-
ing some 54 composers
throughout its 2018-19 season.
Want to guess how many of
those composers are women?
The number is zero. Same
goes for the Philadelphia Or-
chestra… Among the top
American orchestras program-
ming more than just one or
two women next season are
the Boston Symphony Orches-
tra and the Los Angeles Phil-
harmonic. But they still come
up short. Each is presenting
just six women out of a total
of 45.” Multiple reasons —
programming favorites, donor
and management preferences,
males in charge, women enter-
ing composition after many
classics have been established — explain much of the
decision-making but last time we looked it was 2018,
yes? Good reporting on the issue here: hps://
www.npr.org/sections/
deceptivecadence/2018/06/19/617136805/the-sound-of
-silence-female-composers-at-the-symphony?
utm_source=npr_newsleer&utm_medium=email&u
tm_content=20180620&utm_campaign=classical&utm
_term=music
tact information for any of the sources. CJR is asking
for help in expanding the list by submiing addition-
al names and contact information for sources. Here’s
what CJR has thus far: hps://docs.google.com/
spreadsheets/
d/15rUHHE7aCH8eCrfWewSyfrWpJkT1nTqRA2_N
krMINs0/edit#gid=16835773
The International Women’s Media Founda-
tion is urgently seeking donations to the IWMF
Emergency Fund, established in 2013 to provide
women journalists with a lifeline of support in times
of crisis. The Emergency Fund is sustained with the
support of individual donors to address the growing
need to provide direct assistance to women journal-
ists who are suering. The Fund:
— Makes small grants for psychological and
medical care for incidents directly related to threats
and crises caused by one’s work as a journalist;
— Provides three months of temporary relo-
cation assistance in the event of crisis or threat;
— Provides legal aid to counter threats of
imprisonment or censorship;
— Oers non-nancial assistance in the form
of information about additional access to resources.
The Fund has been depleted by the rising
danger to women journalists around the world who
seek the IWMF’s help. Visit this page to donate:
hps://www.gofundme.com/
emergencyfund4femalejournos
A tip of the hat to BethAnn McLaughlin, a
Ph.D. neuroscientist and assistant professor at Van-
derbilt University, who succeeded in persuading
RateMyProfessors.com to drop the “chili pepper”
rating that calculated a professor’s “hotness.” Long
thought to be distracting feature that underminded
female faculty’s authority, the rating was relegated
to the dustbin of history in June, after Professor
McLaughlin wrote, “Put simply, my single mother
did not put my brother and me through college and
graduate school for 25 years so that I could be meas-
ured by a vegetable.”
The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse, now
focusing on gender issues, has described an interest-
ing experiment she had with a Facebook contact
certain that white males were being “erased” from
media, particularly advertising. She supplied him
with studies that showed women and people of col-
or were not out-populating men on TV but he didn’t
buy it. “A scientic experiment was Tom’s idea,”
Hesse wrote. “He’s a data guy; he likes experiments.
In this one, we’d make our own data by watching an
hour of the same channel, coding ads by gender, by
Composer Jennifer
Higdon, whose works
WILL be heard this
season. She is a Gram-
my and Pulier Prize
winner.
www.mediareporttowomen.com 21 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
clusively positive comments when talking about her
skills, work, and/or vision. Fifty-two percent of the
reviews wrien by women but 38% of those wrien by
men included only complimentary comments about
the woman director, such as “master” or “impresario.”
In contrast, male writers were more likely than females
to use exclusively complimentary words and phrases
when talking about male directors. Thirty-two percent
of reviews wrien by men and 23% of reviews wrien
by women used only positive descriptors when talking
about male directors. “Something as simple as the
mention of a director’s name in a review, and labeling
that individual as a ‘master’ of the lmmaking craft,
can help shape the narrative surrounding that direc-
tor,” Lauzen noted.
There are some disparities in the type of mov-
ies male and female critics tend to like, as this Wash-
ington Post report indicates: hps://
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/here-are-lms-that
-got-hurt-because-female-critics-are-outnumbered-by-
men-2-to-1/2018/06/28/7abf2f9e-70d4-11e8-bf86-
a2351b5ece99_story.html?utm_term=.3c6d0e84ed
The Post analysis found that male and female
critics tended to agree on what they regarded as the
best and worst movies, but had more dierence of
opinion on movies in the middle. To give more expo-
sure to the perspective of female critics, producer-
director Miranda Bailey is launching Cherry Picks this
fall here: hps://www.thecherrypicks.com/
It’s a development likely to be welcomed by
“Ocean’s 8” stars Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanche,
who felt their all-female cast, in a takeo of the all-
male “Ocean” series, would be beer analyzed by fe-
male critics, who are in short supply. Bullock is look-
ing for “balancing out the pool of critics so that it re-
ects the world we are in, like we are trying to reect
the world that I live in and my friends live in.”
Blanche freed that male critics would regard
“Ocean’s 8”through “a prism of misunderstanding.”
More on those concerns here: hps://
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/14/female-led-
lms-misunderstood-male-critics-say-stars-oceans/
Monica Castillo took a somewhat dierent
view in The Lily, reminding readers that female critics
aren’t monolithic in their thinking and aren’t there to
cheer on females. “The need for more inclusion does
not mean we should be forced to like all movies simp-
ly because they are helmed by or are starring women,”
she says. Inclusion for its own sake should be the goal.
More from her here: hps://www.thelily.com/why-we-
shouldnt-look-to-female-critics-to-support-women-
centric-movies/
We all know that there’s lots of xing to be
done in Hollywood — correcting bad behavior behind
and in front of the camera and back in the studio oc-
es. We need to re-emphasize that the absence of wom-
en in senior roles is hurting the cinema arts, the audi-
ences who patronize movies, and the employment
opportunities for women in lm.
The focus on Hollywood bigwigs obscures a
key component of lm success: reviews by critics.
Here the poor performance is on hiring by media out-
lets who disproportionately employ male reviewers.
Thumbs Down 2018: Film Critics and Gender,
and Why It Maers, released in July by the Center for
the Study of Women in Television and Film at San
Diego State University, documents how women's un-
deremployment as lm reviewers impacts the expo-
sure female-driven lms and/or lms directed by
women receive.
Across every type of media outlet, male lm
critics outnumber female critics by approximately 2 to
1. This gender imbalance impacts the exposure and
evaluation female-led lms and/or lms with women
directors receive, according to the Center’s study.
First conducted in 2007, Thumbs Down is the most
comprehensive and longest-running study of wom-
en’s representation and impact as lm critics availa-
ble. Over the years, the study has considered more
than 16,000 reviews wrien by more than 900 review-
ers. This latest edition focuses on writers working for
print, broadcast, and online outlets whose reviews
also appear on the Roen Tomatoes website.
Regarding representation, the study found
that men comprised 68% and women 32% of review-
ers in spring 2018. By media outlet, men accounted
for 70% of those writing for trade publications, 70%
writing for general-interest magazines and websites,
69% writing for a news website or wire service, 68%
writing for newspapers, and 68% writing for movie or
entertainment publications. By lm genre, men made
up 78% of those reviewing action and horror features,
75% reviewing animated features, 74% reviewing doc-
umentaries, 73% reviewing comedy/dramas, 70% re-
viewing dramas, 69% reviewing science ction lms,
and 59% reviewing comedies.
According to Center Director Martha Lauzen,
“These gender imbalances maer because they impact
the visibility of lms with female protagonists and/or
women directors, as well as the nature of reviews.”
For example, the study found that when writ-
ing reviews about lms with women directors, female
reviewers were more likely than men to mention the
name of the woman directing the lm, and to use ex-
SOS to Hollywood: Calling More Female Critics
Media Report to Women Summer 2018 22 www.mediareporttowomen.com
June 19 2018, hp://www.niemanlab.org/2018/06/how-to-end-
misogyny-in-the-news-industry-an-open-leer-to-the-
international-journalism-community/
Fojo Media Institute, Gender in Myanmar News: News Content
Analysis from a Gender Perspective, 2017. This report looks at
the Myanmar media market in depth and includes case examples
with detailed analyses of gender bias across diverse content and
platforms.
hps://fojo.se/images/documents/Myanmar/
MM_Gender_fullreport_nov2017_en.pdf
Foster, Michelle J. WAN-IFRA, If I Hadn’t Had Mentors, I Would-
n’t be Here Today: Guide to Establishing a Mentoring Program,
2016
IMS-Fojo Media Institute, Gender in Myanmar News: News con-
tent analysis from a gender perspective, 2017, hps://
www.mediasupport.org/publication/gender-in-myanmar-news/
IWMF (International Women’s Media Foundation), Global Report
on the Status of Women in News Media, 2017
hps://www.iwmf.org/resources/global-report-on-the-status-of-
women-in-the-news-media/
Reporters Without Borders, Women Journalists Commitment and
Challenges, featuring ten women reporters who have overcome
threats, imprisonment and other challenges in order to continue
reporting. hps://rsf.org/en/news/women-journalists-
commitment-and-challenges
Scharf, Dr. Xanthe, Founder of the Fuller Project for International
Reporting and Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa (hps://
borgenproject.org/advancing-girls-education-africa/), as quoted
from a May 30, 2018 phone interview with the author.
Reporters Without Borders, Women’s Rights: Forbidden Subject,
2018, hps://rsf.org/sites/default/les/womens_rights-
forbidden_subject.pdf
The Right Livelihood Award, hp://
www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/laureates/khadija-ismayilova-es/
UNESCO, Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media: Framework of
Indicators to Gauge Gender Sensitivity in Media Operations and
Content, hp://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-
information/resources/publications-and-communication-
materials/publications/full-list/gender-sensitive-indicators-for-
media-framework-of-indicators-to-gauge-gender-sensitivity-in-
media-operations-and-content/
Who Makes the News? Global Media Monitoring Project
(GMMP), the Global Media Monitoring Project is the largest and
longest longitudinal study on the gender in the world’s media. It
is also the largest advocacy initiative in the world on changing
the representation of women in the media.” ‘
hp://whomakesthenews.org/gmmp
World Association for Christian Communication (WACC, in
conjunction with Who Makes the News?)
Campaign and toolbox for “End News Media Sexism” campaign
hp://whomakesthenews.org/advocacy/end-news-media-sexism-
by-2020
World Economic Forum, Ricardo Hausmann, Laura D. Tyson and
Saadia Zahidi, The Global Gender Gap Report (2009), hps://
www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2009
carries substantial risks. Its recent report shows that
“from 2012 to 2017, the rights of at least 90 journalists
in around 20 countries were seriously violated be-
cause they dared to cover or talk about women’s
rights or gender issues. Several months of research
has yielded the following chilling breakdown of these
cases: 11 of these journalists were murdered, 12 were
imprisoned, at least 25 were physically aacked, and
at least 40 others were or are still being threatened on
social networks.”
Misogyny, sexual harassment: Examples of
this are nearly boundless, exhaustive … and exhaust-
ing. Practices range from the types of sexual preda-
tion that came to the fore in the Harvey Weinstein
case in the U.S., but in countries with far fewer legal
protections for the victims, to online harassment and
social media aming. These situations were ad-
dressed head-on by the president of the International
Center for Journalists, Joyce Barnathan, and nine oth-
ers in an open leer shared on the Nieman Lab site
puing forth 14 principles of gender equality for the
news industry.
And yet, women journalists persist.
Hla Hla Htay continues to actively cover the
ethnic cleansing of Muslim minorities in Myanmar.
Chou Chou Namegabe is now a gender and
media consultant based in the U.S. working to estab-
lish an evidence-based journalism platform focusing
on empowering women in Africa.
Khadija Ismayilova, now released from jail,
works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is a
member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Re-
porting Project, OCCRP. In 2016, while imprisoned,
UNESCO honored her as the recipient of its Guiller-
mo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. In 2017, she
was awarded the Right Livelihood Award by the
Swedish Government “for her courage and tenacity
in exposing corruption at the highest levels of gov-
ernment through outstanding investigative journal-
ism in the name of transparency and accountability.”
She was not allowed to leave Azerbaijan to accept the
award in person.
While these outstanding examples showcase
the bravery and professionalism of outstanding fe-
male reporters, gender parity remains a distant reali-
ty for newsrooms in most parts of developing world.
It is worthy of consideration how dierently societies
would view themselves if women’s reporting was
heard more often and their courage valued.
Resources:
Joyce Barnathan, et.al., How to End Misogyny in the News Indus-
try: An Open Leer to the International Journalism Community,
Pressures in Emerging Countries, from Page 5
www.mediareporttowomen.com 23 Summer 2018 Media Report to Women
Brazilian female sports reporters complain
that racial abuse at stadiums is taken more seriously
than sexual harassment, touching, and groping.
They started an initiative, “Let Her Do Her Job,”
after two incidents in March of groping and violence
occurred when the women were working.
"No woman in sports journalism in Brazil
has not been subject to some kind of violence," Livia
Laranjeira, a sports reporter for TV Globo and one of
the organizers of the campaign, told CPJ. "We have
all suered and so we got together and decided to
do something together." Details of their eorts to
ght back are contained in an excellent report by the
Commiee to Protect Journalists: hps://cpj.org/
blog/2018/04/brazils-let-her-do-her-job-campaign-
demands-respec.php
The unwelcome personal contact is one
thing but there’s more, described as “torrents of sex-
ist insults and ridicule on social media” and “erce
ridicule and gender-based aacks” by Agence
France-Presse’s David Courbet in his report on the
sexist backlash endured by female World Cup re-
porters. Some fans complain about hearing wom-
en’s voices in every aspect of the game, from color
commentary to analysis to sideline reporting during
play. The vitriol is aecting some networks’ ability
to recruit female reporters for game coverage. De-
tails on the problems women in the eld are facing
and eorts to defend them, as described by Courbet,
are here: hps://sports.yahoo.com/female-voices-
world-cup-spark-sexist-backlash-181436064--
sow.html
Mainstream press and
television are generally more
complimentary in their observa-
tions, though like their tabloid
colleagues, they’re eager to
quote anonymous palace insid-
ers who claim to know the
Duchess’s innermost thoughts
and what the queen thinks of
her grandson’s wife.
Diana was on the way
to becoming queen if Charles
became king, which is not the
path Meghan and Harry are on.
For that reason, Meghan may be
spared some of the scrutiny that Kate, headed for the
throne with William, experiences. There was lots of
discussion about how Kate would show Meghan the
ropes, as both were commoners when they married.
Some of that coverage had a background hum that
suggested a freewheeling American might have trou-
ble catching on.
Tom Sykes, writing in the Daily Beast in July,
said that despite the Duchess’s having plunged en-
thusiastically into the royal duties expected of her,
with widespread approbation, “There’s also a dis-
turbing subtext around some coverage of Meghan,
which seeks to cast her as a conniving interloper, un-
suitably ambitious, an imposter, a working class
usurper who doesn’t (yet) know her place. She is not,
as newspaper editors sometimes wryly put it, PLU –
People Like Us. Her pretensions to subvert the sa-
cred British class system is an impertinence that will
be punished.
“Of course, the papers can’t openly say this
(out and out snobbism is only slightly less unaccepta-
ble than out and out racism), so instead some have
developed a poisonous but eective strategy of latch-
ing on to very minor alleged breaches of protocol
and using these to aempt to shame and embarrass
Meghan, as well as bolster a negatively-charged per-
ception of her as an outsider.” Sykes’ very interesting
analysis is here: hps://www.thedailybeast.com/its-
time-to-stop-the-classist-sexist-aacks-on-meghan-
markle
The pity is that a mature woman in 2018,
with a successful career behind her and now a mem-
ber of one of the world’s most prominent families, is
patronized to this degree, with timeworn sexist
tropes. She deserves beer.
— Sheila Gibbons, Editor
Photo: By Northern Ireland Oce - hps://www.ickr.com/photos/
niogovuk/41014635181/, CC BY 2.0, hps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=69486224
Covering Soccer A Hassle, from Page 1
suer the consequences.
The coverage of Markle thus far has pri-
marily been about how well an American is morph-
ing into a royal, and the main barometer is her ap-
pearance: hair, hat, coat, shoes, dress, clutch (next
up: baby bump watch). The wags were out immedi-
ately cluck-clucking over an o-the-shoulder sheath
she wore to an afternoon event with the queen. The
stray wisp of hair that charmed so many on her
wedding day elicited disapproval from the
buoned-down who considered it careless and
sloppy. She wore slacks to Wimbledon, after which
it was noted the queen prefers that female royals be
seen in dresses. And what about the British accent
she’s acquiring? An aectation or an adaptation? At
the other end of the approval spectrum are those
that lament that her Southern California bare legs
are now camouaged in demure hose.
Dishing About the Duchess, from Page 24
Meghan, Duchess of
Sussex
Commentary
Dishing About the Duchess
American Meghan Markle rode o in a gilded carriage with her British prince in May and since
then, media outlets besoed by the marriage have commented on very lile other than how she looks
and how she’s adjusting to royal life, all the while speculating how she really feels.
In the laer realm, they’ve been aided by her talkative father, Thomas Markle Sr., who says he
can see in her eyes that she is “terried.” The royals have ghosted him, somewhat understandably, giv-
en his tendency to run his mouth. The tabloid media can’t get enough of him.
Princess Diana redux? Social media and tabloids that have long mourned the death of “the peo-
ple’s princess” and hungered for a substitute are covering Meghan Markle in much the same obsessive
way, feeding an audience fascinated by gossip and glamour. The fact that the lives of these two women
could not be less alike makes no dierence. Once elevated to the palace, a virtual straitjacket is wrapped
around the new arrival and the media do their best to penetrate it. It takes a lot of maturity to cope with
it. Diana, just 20 when she married Charles, was ill-prepared for the media glare, though she became
adept at plying it. Meghan, 37, an experienced television performer, is beer-equipped to play a role
and therefore likely less likely to indulge in the drama that swirled around her late mother-in-law.
The paparazzi antics of photographers and reporters implicated in Diana’s death in a Paris car
chase underwent revision as a way for tabloid media to make peace with the palace in order to preserve
access in the future. At her funeral, her brother, Charles Spencer, decried the media pursuit that made
his sister “the most hunted person of the modern age.” Nevertheless, the clamor for access to the young
royals – the Cambridges and Sussexes – is never-ending. With this generation, though, the royal family
has made it clear that it will come down from the castle tower to sue if its privacy is breached. Today’s
tabloid press, particularly photographers, is expected to show more respect for physical boundaries or
MEDIA REPORT TO WOMEN
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Carmel, CA 93923-8411
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Dishing About the Duchess, Page 23