By TARA MOSS
Below, I present two fairly random examples of The Age newspaper online, snapped as screenshots.
The first was taken by me on July 17 and the second on July 25.
At a glance, I count over 43 men, one baby boy, two illustrated boys (both ads for the film ParaNorman) and one woman, partially visible behind a male. Oh, and a cockatoo of unknown gender:
And another:
I have no interest in targeting The Age, which I enjoy reading (hence the reason I found these front pages in the first place), and it is significant that these two examples were found on the only days I have visited their site recently, because I have been on holiday.
It is entirely possible that on the other days there were 43 women visible on their front page, and only one partially visible man, standing behind a woman. My snapshots by no means constitute a rigorous analysis of gender in Australian media.
However, Chrys Stevenson’s recent gender breakdown of Australian newspapers does. She found the following:
Stevenson’s findings accord with a number of international studies of mainstream media including a 2012 report by UK’s Women in Media, which concluded the following:
In addition, they found that ‘it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in leader-ship roles in government/politics, business, entrepreneurship and nonprofits.’
Whatever you make of this lack of gender diversity in international mainstream media, or what impacts it might have on social, cultural and political life, one thing is certain – it’s unlikely that we really need to worry about bias against male journalists just yet. (Sorry Mr. Mangos.)
For those interested, Stevenson’s full piece in The King’s Tribune can be found here, and is well worth a read.
On a positive note, it is nice to know that every woman in the world is on holiday. (Apart from Commonwealth Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Penny Wong, partially visible behind our male PM in one image.)
Happy holidays, ladies.
This post was originally published on Tara’s website here, and is republished here with full permission.
Tara Moss is a novelist, TV presenter and journalist. Since 1999 she has written and published nine bestselling novels – Fetish, Split, Covet, Hit, Siren,Assassin, The Blood Countess, The Spider Goddess and The Skeleton Key, and been published in 18 countries in 12 languages. Her writing has appeared in Australian Literary Review, The Sydney Morning Herald News Review, The Age, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and more. She has earned her private investigator credentials (Cert III) from the Australian Security Academy and is currently undertaking a Doctorate of Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. You can visit her website here or follow her on Twitter here.
Top Comments
I've noticed for a long time that the news is generally about men, the sports are generally about men, the printed letters to the editor are generally written by men, a lot of the current affair TV shows are generally by men about men, panel TV shows generally have more men on the panel. Half our population are women. Surely it makes sense financially to cater to more than the male population.
Sorry, Tara, but in all honesty I can't think of more than a couple of women who are worth reading so I just don't care.
It's the same old, same old .... Deveny and her cohort of strange vileness, Anne Summers rusted on bigotry, Jane Caro's endless private school bashing ... it's all so predictable, whiny and tired.
Misogyny this, misogyny that. All proLabor, no common sense and Destroy the Joint BS.
Because of the cliquey Feminist media and their constant bitching and derision of any woman who doesn't toe the left line, we are sadly lacking in female voices from the centre view. You're either left, or your ostricised - Devine, Albrechtsen and Razer being the exceptions.
This article is about the under-representation of all women in the media, it is not about who is permitted to publish according to their political agendas.
You use the term "constant bitching" to describe their actions, when these women are exposing injustice?
How much more of a part can you be playing in marginalising women yourself with such divisive commentary?
I think it's best if you stop reading this site. You may not be aware but it is FILLED WITH FEMALES WRITING STUFF. Oh the horrors. Clearly you were unaware because you dislike all females in news media. It's ok though, we have all made the same mistake. There should be a disclaimer on this website!
Lol
Agree with this...seems that the female articles over on the age are generally left wing politically charged man bash pieces as opposed to the generally well rounded pieces found on this site.
Perhaps if they changed their tune and decided to write about normal topics there would be more articles by women on the front page