Women underrepresented in media industry, analysis finds

A group of investigators from FIU’s Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication found that the role and status of women dramatically lags behind men in advertising, broadcast news, newspapers, magazines, online and digital media and public relations.

The extensive data analysis by six FIU researchers also concluded that no research studies or surveys compiled data on women across all communication industries. They reviewed studies, published articles and survey results focusing on women in different areas of the communication industry from 2005-2015.

Among the report’s findings:

• Women journalists’ salaries are 83 percent of what men earn, almost the same as a quarter century ago.
• At the TV networks, women cover 37 percent of the assigned news at NBC, 33 percent at ABC, and 28 percent at CBS.
• Women hold only 23 percent of leadership positions in journalism and media organizations.

“The startling fact, from compiling all the studies, is that in the past decade media have largely ignored the very people who are their largest audience and buying public: women,” said Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, dean emeritus and professor at FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and executive director of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication. “When we started the study, we did not know how inadequate communications organizations were in providing balanced information—that is, information by and about women who make up more than half of the American population.

As a result of the report, the Kopenhaver Center will begin working on what they believe will be the first research study to assess simultaneously the role and status of women across major communication and journalism industries, to include newspaper, magazine, broadcast (radio/television) news, online news, advertising and public relations.

“This type of undertaking is precisely the kind of work the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center was founded to encourage. The next piece of this multiphase, groundbreaking research project will be made available through the center and will serve as a basis for our work to empower and prepare women for leadership roles in both professional and academic media work. Women have outnumbered men in enrollments in college media programs across the U.S. since 1977, but their progress into leadership has not kept pace,” Kopenhaver said.

The study will address the following:

• Breakdown of women in communications by areas of focus
• Are they occupying leadership and management roles? If not, where are they and what are they doing?

The new study, which comprises the second phase of the research project, is made possible by funding provided by the Janet Chusmir Leadership Fellows Program in the Kopenhaver Center. Chusmir was the first woman editor of the Miami Herald and one of the first women editors of a major U.S. daily newspaper.

To learn more about FIU’s Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center, visit www.kopenhavercenter.org.