Men taking top positions in news media
The disbalance between women and men holding top positions in the news industry continues and has even gotten a bit worse. Only 21% of 179 top editors across 240 news brands in a study are women, down from 22% last year, according to the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. On average, 40% of journalists in the 12 markets across five continents studied are women.
Among 51 new top editors appointed across the brands covered, 23% are women but the variation between countries is huge. In Spain, the UK, and the US, half or more of new top editors appointed in the last year are women, but in many others few or none are.
In 11 out of 12 markets, the majority of top editors are men, including in countries where women outnumber men among working journalists. No market in the sample has a majority of women top editors this year.
The percentage of women in top editorial positions varies significantly from market to market, from 7% in Brazil to 50% in the US.
”Looking more broadly at gender inequality in society and the percentage of women in top editorial positions, we find no meaningful correlation. Countries that score well on the UN Gender Inequality Index, such as Finland and Spain, have relatively few women among the top editors”, the institute says.
”There is notable variation in the number of people who get news from outlets with a female top editor. The percentage of online news users in each market who say they get news from one or more major outlets with a woman as the top editor (whether offline or online) ranges from, at the high end, 81% in Kenya and 80% in South Africa to, at the low end, 24% in Brazil and 5% in Japan.”
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