20 Feb Thur Lecture MCH1036
Women in Journalism -
• ‘Over the course of a week in mid-July, our researchers read the front page of every major
newspaper, watched daily prime time news shows on popular TV channels (BBC, ITV, Sky) and
listened to around 100 hours of prime time radio news coverage – breakfast, lunch, drive time
and 10pm evening news on BBC 1,2,4 and 5, LBC and Times Radio – in an effort to better
understand the level of diversity in today’s media landscape’
• Not a single black reporter was featured on the front page of any of the newspapers
• Out of the 174 front-page bylines counted, just one in four went to women.
What is feminist media history? -
• James Curran (2002: 8) suggests that the feminist narrative “tells media history as herstory”
• “In the most basic sense, ‘feminist’ here denotes a perspective on or by media that highlights
and engages with gender-based forms of inequality and exclusion at social, political and
economic levels. Feminist critique need not be focused on women’s media exclusively or
representations of gender, just as documenting women’s media does not necessarily imply a
feminist approach...” (DiCenzo, in Skoog 2011: 13)
• DiCenzo argues that Curran unwittingly reproduces gender stereotypes by conflating feminist
media history with the study of popular women’s journalism ... and ignoring specifically
feminist journalism
18th Century: magazines and periodicals -
• No longer were ‘learning and genius, taste and study’ considered ‘incompatible with the duties
of female life, superior to their understanding and pernicious to the morals of the sex’, a
revolution which the writers took credit for having anticipated in the initial design of the work”
(White 1970: 32)
The Women’s Advocacy press (see Tusan 2000) -
• Continuing economic, social and cultural changes brought about by industrialisation leads to
emergence of women’s advocacy press in latter half of 19th century
Women in Journalism -
• ‘Over the course of a week in mid-July, our researchers read the front page of every major
newspaper, watched daily prime time news shows on popular TV channels (BBC, ITV, Sky) and
listened to around 100 hours of prime time radio news coverage – breakfast, lunch, drive time
and 10pm evening news on BBC 1,2,4 and 5, LBC and Times Radio – in an effort to better
understand the level of diversity in today’s media landscape’
• Not a single black reporter was featured on the front page of any of the newspapers
• Out of the 174 front-page bylines counted, just one in four went to women.
What is feminist media history? -
• James Curran (2002: 8) suggests that the feminist narrative “tells media history as herstory”
• “In the most basic sense, ‘feminist’ here denotes a perspective on or by media that highlights
and engages with gender-based forms of inequality and exclusion at social, political and
economic levels. Feminist critique need not be focused on women’s media exclusively or
representations of gender, just as documenting women’s media does not necessarily imply a
feminist approach...” (DiCenzo, in Skoog 2011: 13)
• DiCenzo argues that Curran unwittingly reproduces gender stereotypes by conflating feminist
media history with the study of popular women’s journalism ... and ignoring specifically
feminist journalism
18th Century: magazines and periodicals -
• No longer were ‘learning and genius, taste and study’ considered ‘incompatible with the duties
of female life, superior to their understanding and pernicious to the morals of the sex’, a
revolution which the writers took credit for having anticipated in the initial design of the work”
(White 1970: 32)
The Women’s Advocacy press (see Tusan 2000) -
• Continuing economic, social and cultural changes brought about by industrialisation leads to
emergence of women’s advocacy press in latter half of 19th century
