STRIKE A BALANCE
Leadership in newsrooms still biased against women - report Media outlets urged to make deliberate efforts to elevate women
World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) Women in News’ recent research gives a snapshot of the structure of newsroom leadership and understanding of the gender gaps.
The organisation’s Media Leadership Mapping analysed major news outlets in 17 countries, and the findings indicate that on average, women hold just 10percent of business leadership positions – this covers the seats of the CEO or board chairperson.
On the editorial front, women make up just 31percent of available leadership roles, which cover positions like those of the Editor-in-Chief or Executive Editor.
Drilling down on the results by the region, on the editorial front, an average of one in five of the most senior editorial positions is filled by a woman in the Arab region. This is reportedly against a slightly better average in Africa and Southeast Asia, where women hold one in three senior editorial positions.
These results echo those of a 2022 Reuters report on women and leadership in news media that found that women occupy 21percent of the top editorial positions. The report looked at 240 online and offline outlets in 12 different markets, overlapping with WIN research.
The report findings also indicate that “women are underrepresented in newsroom leadership, and bringing about gender balance in this area requires that news organisations have focused succession planning.”
It further notes that correcting the imbalance in leadership must be a deliberate strategy. It suggests that organisations “need to think about who they’re hiring next as leaders and prepare a pipeline of women who they can groom into these positions.”
The WIN findings also note that as it is, women journalists receive insufficient development support and they are also affected by gender-specific challenges – such as sexual harassment, unequal pay and threats of violence – that push them out of the industry prematurely.
The findings also established that women’s progression in the media is also curtailed by invisible walls, including gender biases and stereotypes about their leadership, capabilities and aspirations. These hurdles are created by, or reinforced through, systemic and process aspects of organisations.
“As a result, succession planning must deliberately centre around women. Furthermore, various studies have found that where women are in top leadership positions, businesses have improved financial performance; strengthened organisational climates; increased corporate social responsibility and reputation; talent is leveraged better; innovation and collective intelligence are enhanced; and crises are handled better.
It adds that most notably, the ethical and moral case for equal ratios of women and men in media leadership is indisputable – so is the business case.