Journalism, Gender and Power revisits the key themes explored in the 1998 edited collection News, Gender and Power. It takes stock of progress made to date, and also breaks ground in advancing critical understandings of how and why gender matters for journalism and current democratic cultures. This new volume develops research insights into issues such as the influence of media ownership and control on sexism, women’s employment, and "macho" news cultures, the gendering of objectivity and impartiality, tensions around the professional identities of journalists, news coverage of violence against women, the sexualization of women in the news, the everyday experience of normative hierarchies and biases in newswork, and the gendering of news audience expectations, amongst other issues. These issues prompt vital questions for feminist and gender-centred explorations concerned with reimagining journalism in the public interest. Contributors to this volume challenge familiar perspectives, and in so doing, extend current parameters of dialogue and debate in fresh directions relevant to the increasingly digitalized, interactive intersections of journalism with gender and power around the globe. Journalism, Gender and Power will inspire readers to rethink conventional assumptions around gender in news reporting—conceptual, professional, and strategic—with an eye to forging alternative, progressive ways forward.

How do gender relations affect the practice of journalism? Despite the star status accorded to some women reporters, and the dramatic increase in the number of women working in journalism, why do men continue to occupy most senior management positions? And why do female readers, viewers and listeners remain as elusive as ever? News, Gender and Power addresses the pressing questions of how gender shapes the forms, practice, institutions and audiences of journalism. The contributors, who include John Hartley, Pat Holland, Jenny Kitzinger and Myra Macdonald, draw on feminist theory and gender-sensitive critiques to explore media issues such as: * ownership and control * employment and occupation status * the representation of women in the media * the sexualization of news and audience research. Within this framework the contributors explore media coverage of: * the trial of O. J. Simpson * British beef and the BSE scandal * the horrific crimes of Fred and Rosemary West * child sexual abuse and false memory syndrome * the portrayal of women in TV documentaries such as Modern Times and Cutting Edge.

How is gender constructed in the media? To what extent do portrayals of gender influence everyday perceptions of ourselves and our actions? In what ways do the media reinforce and sometimes challenge gender inequalities? Critical Readings: Media and Gender provides a lively and engaging introduction to the field of media and gender research, drawing from a wide range of important international scholarship. A variety of conceptual and methodological approaches is used to explore subjects such as: entertainment; news; grassroots communication; new media texts; institutions; audiences. Topics include: Gender identity and television talk shows Historical portrayals of women in advertising The sexualization of the popular press The representation of lesbians on television The cult of femininity in women's magazines Images of African American women and Latinas in Hollywood cinema Sexual violence in the media Women in popular music Pornography and masculine power Women's relationship to the Internet. This book is ideal for undergraduate courses in cultural and media studies, gender studies, the sociology of the media, mass communication, journalism, communication studies and politics.

How do gender relations affect the practice of journalism? Despite the star status accorded to some women reporters, and the dramatic increase in the number of women working in journalism, why do men continue to occupy most senior management positions? And why do female readers, viewers and listeners remain as elusive as ever? News, Gender and Power addresses the pressing questions of how gender shapes the forms, practice, institutions and audiences of journalism. The contributors, who include John Hartley, Pat Holland, Jenny Kitzinger and Myra Macdonald, draw on feminist theory and gender-sensitive critiques to explore media issues such as: * ownership and control * employment and occupation status * the representation of women in the media * the sexualization of news and audience research. Within this framework the contributors explore media coverage of: * the trial of O. J. Simpson * British beef and the BSE scandal * the horrific crimes of Fred and Rosemary West * child sexual abuse and false memory syndrome * the portrayal of women in TV documentaries such as Modern Times and Cutting Edge.

Comprised of original research in diverse genres and medias, Women and Media: International Perspectives brings together eight international scholars to explore key issues of the gender-media relation. Provides important insights into how gender is implicated in media industries. Address key issues of the gender-media relation, from an analysis of news media’s coverage of women politicians, to the marketing of ‘girl power’, to strategizing for equality in newsrooms. Highlights the theme that media have the potential both to reinforce the status quo in power arrangements in society but also to contribute to new, more egalitarian ones. Includes an introduction by the editors that carefully maps the contours of the international struggle between feminists and the media, section overviews, bibliographies, key terms, and discussion questions.

This edited collection examines women journalists’ experiences and obstacles in South Africa’s (SA) democracy. They exercise power, and add a vital diversity, but they are routinely harassed in the online social media space of big tech companies such as Twitter and Facebook by populist and corrupt politicians and their supporters. Using SA as the case study, this book examines attempts to curb women journalists’ freedom combining theory and first-hand accounts. The target audience for the book includes scholars of political philosophy, gender, media, communications, NGOs, media freedom activists and journalists.

Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates. Eschewing a straightforwardly positive or negative assessment the book explores the contradictory character of contemporary gender representations, where confident expressions of girl power sit alongside reports of epidemic levels of anorexia among young women, moral panics about the impact on men of idealized representations of the 'six-pack', but near silence about the pervasive re-sexualization of women's bodies, along with a growing use of irony and playfulness that render critique extremely difficult. The book looks in depth at five areas of media - talk shows, magazines, news, advertising, and contemporary screen and paperback romances - to examine how representations of women and men are changing in the twenty-first century, partly in response to feminist, queer and anti-racist critique. Gender and the Media is also concerned with the theoretical tools available for analysing representations. A range of approaches from semiotics to postcolonial theory are discussed, and Gill asks how useful notions such as objectification, backlash, and positive images are for making sense of gender in today's Western media. Finally, Gender and the Media also raises questions about cultural politics - namely, what forms of critique and intervention are effective at a moment when ironic quotation marks seem to protect much media content from criticism and when much media content - from Sex and the City to revenge adverts - can be labelled postfeminist. This is a book that will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender and media studies, as well as those in sociology and cultural studies more generally.

The media carry significant notions of social and cultural norms and values and have a powerful role in constructing and reinforcing gendered images. The news in particular has an important role in how notions of power are distributed in the society. This report presents study findings on how women and men are represented in the news in the Nordic countries, and to what extent women and men occupy the decision-making positions in the media. The survey is based on the recent findings from three cross-national research projects. These findings are supported by national studies. The results indicate that in all the Nordic countries women are underrepresented in the news media both as news subjects and as sources of information. Men also dominate in higher-level decision-making positions. The report includes examples of measures used to improve the gender balance in Nordic news.

This analysis of the journalism profession is unique in that it uses gender as a central explanatory variable, it is comparative, and it explores the impact of equity legislation on the profession in North American and Europe. The book's systematic focus on gender not only as a biological, but as a socially constructed attribute permits the author to address the systemic biases that are inherent in the social reproduction of the journalism profession. A gender approach can clarify the minority status of females in the profession and why there is a difference in the access, promotion, and remuneration between female and male staff. More importantly, the gender approach is able to pin-point the more intangible networks of male power, which exist outside the authority structure. Finally, this approach provides evidence of the difficulties females encounter in functioning in managerial roles.

Women Making News tells two stories: first, it examines alternative print-based political cultures that women developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and second, it explores how British female subjects themselves forged a wide range of new political identities through the pages of "their press."Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, a rising cohort of female editors and journalists created a new genre of political journal they proclaimed to be both "for and by women," which continued until the 1930s. The development of new specialized periodicals, such as Women's Penny Paper, Votes for Women, Women's Gazette, and Shafts, fostered the proliferation of diverse political agendas aimed at re-imagining women's status in society. At the same time, the institutional infrastructure of the women's press provided new opportunities for women in nontraditional employments.Tusan's approach employs social and cultural historical analysis in the reading of popular printed texts, as well as rare and previously unpublished personal correspondence and business records from archives throughout Britain. Women Making News is the first book-length study to uncover the important relationship between print culture and the gender politics that provided a vehicle for women's mobilization in the political culture of modern Britain.Michelle Tusan is an assistant professor of British history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.A volume in The History of Communication series, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone