As of: February 23, 2024, 9:37 a.m
By: Max Müller
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Women appear significantly less frequently in articles than men.
This is not because there are only a few female editors-in-chief, says journalist Stefan Mair.
But why else?
In 2021, the politician and journalist Marina Weisband wrote about a phenomenon for which there is still no term.
The article, which
appeared on
Deutschlandfunk , was about the mechanism by which women in journalistic articles are often only referred to as “partner of”, “ex-wife of” or “affiliate of”.
You don't get a last name or a position.
Weisband listed several examples of this thesis, but something crucial was missing: evidence.
In this way, she primarily expressed a feeling - which, however, is not exclusive to Weisband.
Stefan Mair also had a gut feeling, but the journalist from the Schweizer
Handelszeitung
wanted to know exactly.
“I deal a lot with economic topics, which is probably why I’m very focused on numbers, data and facts,” he says in an interview with
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Together with Annabella Bassler, CFO of Ringier Publishing, he examined how often women are depicted in the media.
Using software, they evaluated every article published by Ringier Verlag.
The result is a book (“A guide for more diversity and equality in the media”) and a shocking result: 77 percent of media reports in Switzerland are about men.
According to the Global Media Monitoring Project 2021, the share worldwide is as high as 82 percent.
Women respond more hesitantly to media inquiries
When looking for reasons, Mair quickly comes to a problem that seems to be homemade.
“I know from many journalists that they don’t pay attention to gender when requesting an interview.
However, I often notice that women respond more hesitantly to inquiries and ask more questions.
Which quotes are used?
Which photo do you show?
We journalists have a duty to allay fears.” There are reasons for the fears, for example when selecting photos.
“We asked experts exactly about this.
“It turned out that they are often rated in the comment columns based on their appearance,” says Mair.
Every year, the equality initiative “Pro Quote” records how many women work in leading positions in leading German media.
The proportion is slowly increasing.
At the last count in July 2023, the leadership of the editorial departments examined (including
Spiegel
,
Süddeutsche Zeitung
and
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
) consisted of an average of 39.3 percent women.
That is 0.4 percentage points more than in the previous year.
For the first time, the so-called female power share was over 40 percent in five of the nine editorial departments examined.
For comparison: In 2012 the rate was 13.7 percent.
Journalist networks are often dominated by men
Stefan Mair does not believe that there is a direct causal connection to the type of reporting.
“We don’t need to increase the number of female editors-in-chief.
I don’t think women and men work fundamentally differently,” says Mair.
“The problem is that journalists often have a network of people.
The same people are called again and again – and they are still often men in the decisive positions of power.”
Mair rejects a quota.
With his project he does not see himself in the position of making demands, but rather of depicting the current situation.
“We first wanted to create the opportunity for editorial teams to find out in black and white how often men and women have their say,” he says.
What follows from this finding is the responsibility of the respective editorial team.
AI in journalism: marked “sexist”.
The question of gender representation is highly topical given the rapid spread of AI.
In many places, journalism is currently experimenting with artificial intelligence - for example in the preparation of interviews, text creation and image design (also at
IPPEN.MEDIA
).
“It is precisely here that we see how sexist the AI works,” says Mair. “When we have an image generated in the context of economic issues, we always notice that women have deep necklines and wear high shoes.
That’s understandable, the AI can only work with what already exists – and our analysis shows that women have not been and will not be portrayed equally in the media for a very long time.”