In one of my earlier posts, Inspiring a better world with courage and entrepreneurship I mentioned that a particular project, The Women’s International Perspectives, had called my attention because it brings to the forefront the under representation of women’s voices in on-line news publication.
After I stumbled into this project I spent an entire evening reading about this issue. It was a bit disconcerting to realize that women journalists, trained by their professions to investigate and report on all sorts of issues, have not gained much ground on their own turf .
Why was this? But, more importantly, what does this mean for the rest of the women with fewer tools than journalists and who might expect journalists to carry our voices?
Well, today, Carol Jenkins has an article in The Christian Science Monitor titled: Voices too often missing in op-ed land: women’s, with the sub-header It’s up to women and editors to create a better gender balance.
Two opposite points from two women quoted in Jenkins’ article are relevant to my questions:
- “Ruth Marcus, one of two female staff columnists at the Post, believes it is women’s reluctance to speak out, rather than “male chauvinist editors.” It’s a variation on what the Brookings Institution calls the “ambition gap.” [Is it a woman’s reluctance or preference?]
- “…we agree with Ms. Howell, whose analysis of the Post’s op-ed imbalance blamed the numbers on the “tradition” of hiring white men to write and the failure of more women and people of color to submit.”
At the end of the day, Jenkins’ article is the media version of the ones written about the gender gap in the technology field and which I refer to in my post To Choose or Not to Choose.
The parallels are of great importance because they reflect the same realities as summarized in To Choose or Not to Choose:
- This research focuses on “personal preference” as a determinant of “whether a qualified woman would go into the information technology field.” [One of the points in Rosenbloom’ study has to do with women choosing careers based on preferences that tend to take them away from scientific fields. Is it a woman’s reluctance or preference?]
- According to the Athena Factor’ findings, the reasons why women weren’t staying in the technology field ranged from “machismo that continues to permeate these work environments” to women being unable to decipher the mysteriousness of some career paths.
After reading about the gender gap in both fields, media and technology, I tend to believe the issues are virtually the same. In fact, I believe the gender gap issues are virtually the same in all fields because they are all based on the same social and professional realities.
So far, none of the material or projects I have read and found offers any promising answer to how the gender gap can be bridged.
However, I have found a promising hope in the fact that the media industry might not survive unless it embraces new technology changes.
The hope comes from the fact that the new technology changes are being driven by a generation of individuals that is becoming socially conscious very early on. This new generation seems to be gender blind and more concerned about the well-being of others than previous generations. And it could be our hope to really start bridging the gender gap and have women journalists trully carrry women’s voices.
Filed under: Current Affairs, General, The Professional Woman, Women and Entrepreneurship, Women and Technology | Tagged: gender gap, journalists, technology, Woman, Women, Women in Technology
