Document 85: "Media," in Susanna Downie, Decade of Achievement: 1977-1987: A Report on a Survey Based on the National Plan of Action for Women (Washington, D.C.: National Women's Conference Committee, 1988), pp. 52-53.
p. 52
MEDIA
NATIONAL PLAN GOALS
•more employment of women in policy-making positions in all media •expand portrayal of women to include greater variety of roles and more accurate reflection of the numbers and lifestyles of women in society •more training opportunities for women for technical jobs •public broadcasting should assume a leadership role in integrating women in employment and programming •continued monitoring of the mass media by women's and advocacy groups and appropriate action to improve the image and employment of women in the communications industries.
Progress has been made in the Post-Houston decade.
EMPLOYMENT:
A study by American Women in Radio and TV (AWRT) released in June 1987 show that women at all levels of TV management jumped from 22.3% in 1978 to 29.9% in 1987; in radio, women went from 21.4% to 30% in the same time period. But the study also showed that significant numbers of women have yet to bridge the gap from middle to top management. In TV, women are just 6.1% of presidents, v-ps and general managers, little changed from 5.6% in 1978. In radio, women have 8.4% of top jobs, up 2.5% in nine years.
FCC lets women and minorities down: A study by the Telecommunications Consumer Coalition shows a dramatic increase in the percentage of women and minorities hired by TV stations from 1971 up to 1980. That growth virtually stopped in 1980, however, because the FCC stopped enforcing existing hiring regulations which specify that hiring come up to at least 50% of the percent of women or minority persons in the labor force. The FCC is also ignoring enforcement of regulations at networks, and new satellite networks dont fall under FCC regs.
The FCC (which does continue to study the situation) found that in 1986, although women constitute 44.5% of the labor force, they hold just 40.4% of jobs in cable and 37.4% in broadcasting.
Radio is more fair to women than TV: A 1985 survey by Vernon Stone (Univ. of Missouri, Columbia) for the Radio Television News Directors Association found that 10% of TV News Directors were women (in 1985) compared with 5% in 1979. Radio stations had 21% women News Directors, compared to 11% in 1984. In 1976 women were 20% of TV anchorpersons and 37% of radio newscasters. In 1985, these percentages increased to 36% and 53% respectively. This survey also revealed that women TV News Directors earn 38% less than men News Directors. In radio, the wage gap for women News Directors is 18%.
Jean Gaddy Wilson's study, "Taking Stock: Women in the Media Before the 21st Century" (Gannett Foundation, 1987), found that 36% of all employees at newspapers, TV, and radio stations are women. Wilson also found that even when salaries of men and women with the same length of service, at newspapers of similar size, are compared, the women's salaries are lower in every job category and every circulation size.
Dorothy Jurney has made a 10-year study of women in news policy-making jobs on U.S. daily and Sunday newspapers. Her survey showed that from 1977 to 1986, women made a gain of 7.2% in directing editorships. This includes years when real or threatened audits paid off in a steep rise in promotions for women. The National Federations of Presswomen is working with the American Society of Newspaper Editors to make Jurney's study an on-going project. Her study, completed in 1987, will be released in 1988.
Few women now own or have ever owned media outlets: in 1985 women owned controlling stock in fewer than 3% of TV stations 9% of radio stations, and only a handful of newspapers had women owners or publishers.
All of these figures have to be understood in the light not only of women's presence in the population and the workforce, but also the fact that since 1977, women have accounted for more than half of enrollments in journalism classes nationwide, and in 1984, the figure was 59%.
Images of Women: The National Commission on Working Women continues to report on the portrayal of women in television programs in each new fall season's offerings. In 1982, NCWW's first report — "What's Wrong with This Picture?" — found only about 1/3 of characters on TV were women, and that they were mostly young, white, and single. The 1987 report showed an improved picture. The number of women characters had increased and become more diverse. "However," the report says, "there are still far too few minority females on TV, and those who do appear are almost totally relegated to situation comedies and stereotyped roles," (See Older Women for NCWW's report on images of older women on TV.)
The Legal Route: Many large suits brought by
women against publishers have been successful, most of them settled in the
early 80's. A Title VII class action suit against McMillan Publishing Co.
p. 53
Media Report: But you didn't read about these cases in The New York Times, or The Washington Post. You read about them in Media Report to Women, published by the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), founded by Donna Allen in 1972 and dedicated to reporting on "what women are thinking and doing to change the communications media." Media Report recently (1987) changed owner and editorship — it is now being published by WIFP Associate Sheila Gibbons. Ms. Allen will continue to publish the annual Index/Directory of Women's Media.
Women's Media: Thanks to the Index-Directory, we can trace the development of women's own media, without which much of the work on the Plan documented in this survey report would have been much harder. Since there was so much news (for feminists) that was not being carried by existing media, we had to create to our own. The first feminist women's newspaper started in 1969. The following table shows the growth in women's media between 1977 and 1987.
| 1977 | 1987 | |
| Periodicals | 150 | 320 |
| Presses/Publishers | 33 | 112 |
| Radio & TV Programs | 27 | 46 |
| News Services | 3 | 13 |
| Bookstores | 32 | 86 |
| Library Collections | 14 | 72 |
| Music Groups | 18 | 38 |
| Art/graphics/theater | 27 | 48 |
(Note: the 1987 figures are probably more accurate than the 1977 figures because the Index/Directory has become better known over the years. For instance, Ms. Allen notes that in 1977 there were probably more library collections on women, but they had not yet registered with the directory. And in every category there have been losses, so that the increase in numbers has been achieved in spite of casualties along the way.)
HERSAY news service started in 1977, and is the only one of the early ones still operating.
The main growth has been in single issue periodicals, and special identity periodicals, such as women of color, lesbians, overweight women, motorcycle women, women in the martial arts, etc. Most of the information carried in these periodicals can be got no other way, and most of it comes from the women doing the work, women organizing on the issues that concern them. All have begun to communicate as women, among themselves.
Donna Allen's daughter, Martha Leslie Allen, has just completed her PhD dissertation on this subject (Development of Communication Networks Among Women - 1963-1983, Unpublished Diss. Howard University. May 1988.) and most of the above paragraph comes from a recent conversation with her.
The Gray Lady Finally Recognizes "Ms.": On June 30, 1986, the New York Times, the "Gray Lady" of American journalism, finally adopted the use of "Ms." as an honorific for women. But this step was not taken without considerable nudging from concerned feminists, starting in the early 70's, and continuing steadily over the years up to 1986. Paula Kassell, founder and Senior Editor of New Directions for Women (one of the oldest and best of the women's newspapers discussed above), bought stock in the Times just so she could go to the stockholder's meetings. She had raised the issue many times at those meetings, as had other women, and many letters to the editor had been written. The full story, including an amusing exchange between Arthur Ochs Sulzburger, publisher of The Times and Ms. Kassell, is recounted in the Sept./Oct. 1986 issue of New Directions for Women.
The adoption of Ms. in the NYT style sheet is representative of a widespread change in American journalism, not yet well-documented, in which many Plan issues previously ignored. downplayed or distorted, have begun to be taken seriously (e.g. child care, child abuse, battered women, women in politics, women in the work force), at least since 1984 and Ms. Ferraro's campaign for the Vice-Presidency. There is still a great deal of room for improvement, but the word "feminist" is no longer a slur, and reporters sometimes even use the words "sexism" and "racism" as valid descriptive terms.
-- mostly Sue Kaufman, Assistant Professor of Communications at Eastern Illinois University,
and a little Susanna Downie, with much reliance on the work of Donna and Leslie Allen.
RESOURCES:
American Women in Radio and TV (AWRT), 1101 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 700. Washington DC 20036. (202) 429-5102.
Women in Communications International (WICI), 1250 Eye St. NW, Washington DC 20005.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, 3306 Ross Place NW, Washington DC 20008. (202) 966-7783. Pub. Index-Directory of Women's Media.
Media Report to Women, $25/yr. From Communication Research Associates, Inc., 10606 Mantz Road, Silver Spring MD 20903. (301) 445-3230.
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