In the latest in a series of personal reflections on womens role in the media, Luba Kassova, author of The Missing Perspectives of Women in News reflects on why she believes women in newsrooms are counted but not included in the decision making.
Have you ever expressed a view that was dismissed or trivialised immediately? Have you ever worked in a news organisation where you felt invisible or uncomfortable about challenging the status quo? If you have, I would suggest that you are most likely to be a woman or a person of colour and least likely to be a white man.
News organisations, like many others, often view achieving gender equity as a linear process. The underlying assumed theory of change is that the more women are recruited into newsrooms and hired or promoted to top leadership roles, the more female-centric the organisation's news content will become and the more inclusive of women's perspectives the organisation and its news will be.
But is this really the case? Does diversity in news organisations guarantee inclusivity and gender egalitarianism in news?
This year, after 170 years of men in charge, Alessandra Galloni became Reuters' first Editor-in-Chief, while Sally Buzbee brought 143 years of male leadership to an end at The Washington Post, becoming its first female Executive Editor. In 2020 Roula Khalaf became Financial Times' first female Editor in 131 years. The same year, Nwabisa Makunga became the first female Editor of South Africa's The Sowetan newspaper, 40 years after its launch. These appointments followed those of Kath Viner in 2015 as the Guardian's first female Editor-in-Chief, after 194 years of men occupying the top spot, and, in the same year, Zanny Minton Beddoes, as The Economist's first female Editor-in-Chief, after 170 years of male dominance.
Yet it was 130 years ago in 1891, that Rachel Beer became the first female Editor of The Observer and the owner-proprietor of The Sunday Times. In The Fleet Street Girls, the story of the trailblazing women who broke into the exclusive men's club of journalism in the UK, the author Julie Welch ponders: Something about Rachel Beer that I would love to have learned is whether she employed women on either of her papers. None are mentioned in the book... This powerful question points to a key challenge that news organisations still wrestle with today: namely that gender parity in newsrooms or a female leader at the top of an organisation does not guarantee equity, inclusivity or more gender-balanced content.
Visibility A pronoun analysis conducted by the international strategy consultancy AKAS, which examined women's share of quoted voice as sources, protagonists or experts in the online editions of 19 news outlets between August 2020 and August 2021 found that none of the above-mentioned news organisations led by women editors are even close to gender parity in terms of share of voice.
Share of Voice - Women
Guardian Media ranks 5th with 37%
The Washington Post ranks 8th with 35%.
The Sowetan ranks 12th with 31%.
Reuters ranks 16th with 24%
Financial Times ranks 19th with 24%.
The Economist ranks 19th with 20%.
Source: AKAS
These results echo the findings of the 2020 The Missing Perspectives of Women in News report which concluded that women's voices continue to be marginalised in news in the 21st century. That report also found that there was no strong relationship between the proportion of women being news editors in a country and the proportion of women featuring in the news.
Gender Pay Gap A gender pay gap analysis of the latest available data in the UK, again conducted by AKAS reveals that 95% of the news organisations tracked have not reached gender parity on this dimension either. Out of 20 news organisations researched in the UK, the Guardian fared best, with the second lowest gender pay gap in terms of median hourly pay. Nevertheless, women's median hourly pay was 4.9% lower than men's. By contrast, with an hourly pay gap of 15.9% and 17.6% in favour of men, the Financial Times and Reuters ranked 13th and 14th on women's hourly median pay, while The Economist was 17th with women's hourly pay being 19.3% lower than men's.
Amount women paid less than men (median hourly wage)
Guardian women ranks 2nd with 4.9%
Financial Times ranks 13th with 15.9%
Reuters ranks 14th with 17.6%
The Economist ranks 17th with 19.3%
Source: Gov.UK - gender pay gap
Newsrooms may be led by women, but the cultures are quite masculine and very patriarchal.
Nwabisa Makunga, Editor, The Sowetan
Why does diversity at the top of news organisations not lead to equality in pay? Research and some news organisations' own investigations point to organisational culture getting in the way . Frequently women and people of colour feel on the periphery of organisational culture. Even when they make up half of newsrooms and news leadership teams, as is the case at the New York Times, women (and especially women of colour) do not feel that their perspectives are heard and acted upon, as the latest New York Times Diversity and Inclusion report revealed.
A study published in 2012 in the European Journal of Communication by Hanitzsch and Hanusch in 2012, found that once in newsrooms, women and men operate within the same professional standards and make similar professional choices. The authors conclude that journalists' professional identity in news organisations overrides their gender or other identities. Journalists choose to play by the existing spoken and unspoken cultural rules. This may partly explain why news outlets such as The Economist, which has been led by a female Editor for the last six years, remain significantly biased towards men's voices in their news outputs as well as in their pay.
Newsrooms may be led by women,
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
31/08/2025
Legrand | AV, a global specialist and industry leader in audiovisual solutions, returns to CEDIA Expo 2025, taking place Sept. 4-6 in Denver, with a powerful li...
31/08/2025
Global media technology company Backlight will unveil new capabilities in its Iconik, Wildmoka, and Zype product lines at IBC2025 (booth #1.D09), September 12 1...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
In the latest in a series of personal reflections on womens role in the media, Luba Kassova, author of The Missing Perspectives of Women in News reflects on why she believes women in newsrooms are counted but not included in the decision making. 
