Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Women in the Paper

Something that has been gaining the interest of fellow students has come to my attention. Have you ever stopped to consider the amount of “face-time” women get in newspapers? Pick up a newspaper, and you may see where I’m about to go with this…
I found this study that was done in 2004 which actually tracks the progress of newspapers and their photographs of women since the first study in 1974. It also takes into account the photo’s cutline, therefore not only observing the implicit message of the photo, but the explicit as well. Despite the thirty-year time difference between studies, the facts remain the same.
I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear this (Can you sense the sarcasm?), but after studying 184 issues of four Connecticut newspapers which provided 8960 images, “in most pages and in most roles, photos of men far outnumbered those of women...It is also clear that the roles in which women and men are portrayed are clustered stereotypically professional and sports for men and spouse for women.”
SPOUSE for women? That’s what gets women in newspapers? Marrying a successful man? There it is, ladies! You want publicity? Become a spouse!
The real problem here is that the media plays a leading role in our formation and even our maintenance of social and, sadly, stereotypical roles. Only 6% of papers studied featured women as main characters. If a newspaper is to provide the “news,” why are women being left out of lead but placed in supporting roles?
Straight from the study..Important!
“Stories about women has smaller headlines and were shorter, there were eight times more front=page news stories about men than women, men appeared in sports stories 14 times more often than women…In business news, women were rarely quoted…Stories about women tend to be soft news…Women often identified by their spouse’s name rather than their own first name…Women made the news in subordinate, and sex-object roles more than men, who were in the news because of occupation or sports.” (122)
In the area of professional sports we find the same problem. (*Remember that the study only focuses on adults, so high school sports are left out of the findings.) Photographs of men appeared 14 to one.
Another ridiculous thing that was said in the study was this: “Men are most likely to make page one because they are doing serious, important things. Women make page one because they are interesting.” Take it for what it is, the study’s director was the one who said this quote…She’s a woman.
The study, completed by Barbara Luebke of the University of Hartford, mentioned that the news media is there to answer a very general question to its public. That question being “What’s new?” “If in practice that answer generally overlooks women or treats them stereotypically, then the media help perpetuate negative images of women” (122). Bingo! There’s a start.
If we’re not looking at magazines or other medium geared towards women’s issues, empowerment, health, beauty or any of the other aspects that come with being a woman, than the images of women in positive light are few and far between. It just doesn’t seem fair that women don’t make the final edit in newspapers.

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