You Can't Be what you Can't See

INTERVIEW

Sustainability MAG: You published a study - The gender balance of expert sources quoted by UK news outlets online- earlier this year, which rings the alarm on women’s place in the media. Can you tell us more about it?

Laura Jones: The research, was carried out by the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, on behalf of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. It looked at the gender balance of expert sources used by a sample of UK media across eight types of news coverage, revealing that women are significantly underrepresented. Averaging the gender balance over these categories produces a split of 77% men compared to 23% women.

How does mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions?

It’s obviously difficult to draw a direct cause and effect relationship between media representation of women experts and their under-representation in leadership positions. However, we know that there is a strong gap in perceptions of male and female leadership and credibility. There are certain things that we as a society code ‘male’ - politics, science, leadership - and so when we come across women in these areas, we find it jarring, and this leads us to make biased evaluations, and underestimate women’s competence.

There is a body of experimental research demonstrating the existence of these sorts of biases. Whether it be political tweets, articles about sport or abstracts for scientific papers, simply changing the name on the information has been shown to affect respondents’ judgement of the quality, competence or expertise of the content. But these biases, and the stereotypes that they are linked to, are not innate. They are formed by the social environment we live in, in which the media plays a large role.

What are the stereotypes that are thus conveyed?

When the public discussion is dominated by male voices it creates a negative feedback cycle; whereby male voices are seen as more credible and female ones are sidelined. This makes it less likely that women and girls will see themselves reflected in those fields that are important to public life and will be less likely to pursue the sorts of subjects and occupations that will give them this sort of expertise and be less confident when they do, feeding back into the cycle of underrepresentation.

In this context, how important are role models?

I think role models can be very important. However, my guess would be that it is much more important for women’s representation to be normalised than for us to celebrate a few exceptional women. While those women are to be applauded the problem with focusing on them is that while this can be inspiring to some it can also send the message to women and girls, you need to be exceptional to get there, to lead, to have your say in public life. So, yes role models are important, but it’s important that there’s lots of them, and that they are relatable.

Media seems to have a hard time associating expertise with women. By showcasing mainly male experts, what are the potential impacts regarding the influence they can have on society (and thus women cannot)?

It’s important to have a range of voices to contribute to the public debate. In most cases, experts are not dispassionately presenting facts but are putting forward their analysis of the facts. But analyses are based upon deciding how much weight you give to certain factors, and that will be informed by your experience. A fascinating study from earlier this year illustrates the point. After surveying over 1,000 economists from 18 countries, the researchers found that female economists were far more likely than men to prefer government interventions over market solutions, to be in favour of increased environmental protection, to think that labour market policies were unequal, and were slightly more likely to disapprove of austerity. This doesn’t mean that differences in economic policy are coded into the X and Y chromosomes - but the reality of many women’s lives - the different sectors we currently work in, the disproportionate amount of care giving we participate in, means that economic policies affect men and women differently.

Another example comes from the Brexit debate in the UK analysis by the University of Loughborough found that men received 91% of EU referendum coverage in newspapers and 84% of broadcast media coverage. What this meant is that there was almost no discussion of how Brexit might affect women. A lot of the labour market policies that protect women’s rights – such as the laws on part time work - originate from the EU.

What responsibility does mainstream media have regarding the images they convey? Can it be neutral?

This is a difficult question, not least because it’s almost impossible to say what ‘neutral’ looks like. There are some basic guidelines that the media should follow in terms of the way that they report on sexual violence – too often the media focuses on victim’s clothing choice. But beyond that journalists also have an extra responsibility to seek out diverse voices, rather than ‘neutrally’ hold up a mirror to society. Who we see explain the world around us sends a strong symbolic signal about whose views we value, and what is possible for different groups of people. If anything will change the sorts of biases that lead us to code certain things ‘male’ and certain other things ‘female’ then it will be more women speaking on these topics in the media and normalising women’s representation and opinions in public life.

How can media ensure a better representation of women?

Ask them! I used to work in the media, so I understand that often people are working under pressure to time constraints and so it’s always tempting just to speak with people who you’ve worked with before, but that feeds into the cycle of women’s underrepresentation. Journalist Ed Yong has written a great piece about how he fixed the gender balance in the sources he quoted through a little extra effort and self-monitoring. There are also great resources like women also know stuff that can help. If women are reluctant to talk to you or appear it’s also important to ask yourself why that might be. Are you asking them to do something last minute when they probably have other responsibilities? Is there anything you can do to help with that?

To be read also in the dossier "True to Women?": 

• So cliché!
• Raphaël Liogier: Descent to the Male's Core 
• The Power of Gender Stereotypes
• Meet Jana Messer, Head of Steelplant
• When companies raise awareness among their employees…and their future recruits
• Fighting visible and invisible obstacles