Women's expertise marginalised in Covid media coverage

[Nothingtosayofinteresttoworld]

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/women-have-been-marginalised-in-covid-19-media-coverage

Female voices and expertise have been marginalised in media reporting of the coronavirus crisis, our new study has found.

We carried out a big-data analysis of 146,867 articles from 15 top news sources in the UK, Australia and the US.

It revealed that for every mention of a prominent female STEM expert in a news story about coronavirus, there were 19 mentions of their male counterparts.

There was also a clear divide between traditionally "feminine" and "masculine" issues: women make up over half of those quoted in articles related to childcare – but fewer than one in six of those quoted in economic coverage and a quarter in public health reporting.

Thanks for sharing OP, bookmarking to read later

That's particularly galling given the heavy representation of women in some of the most relevant covid roles e.g. GP, nurse, obstetrics, icu speciality, charity sector (e.g. domestic abuse and homelessness), recruitment, public sector (e.g. unemployment), childcare, teaching, social work, care etc. There are also a lot of women in the finance, accounting and economics sectors and involved in public policy. One would think that women would be OVER represented 🤔 ... unless --->> sexism.

Of course. It is wrong but some men only listen to other men.

This is so depressing. There have been a number of initiatives led by news organisations in the UK to try to find more STEM spokeswomen and this suggests they've made little difference. There have also been in-house initiatives to record male/female voices & analyse the split, but similarly this suggests it’s just paying lip service to the problem. My guess would be that 1) journalists are time poor and fall back on the same sources repeatedly when up against it (which relates to the comment: the more expert and well-known the voices become, the further women’s share in them decreases) 2) there isn’t enough organisational pressure to make a difference beyond short lived initiatives 3) women are not being pushed forward as spokespeople by stem organisations. Underpinning all is this no doubt is sexism - taking female voices less seriously (esp in times of crisis) and as the report identifies the lack of high profile female figures in leadership roles. Any woman struggling with work, childcare, home schooling, caring responsibilities & domestic responsibilities will know that very little consideration has been given to women’s needs throughout.

Are there any MPs talking about how to address this? It's so glaring:

Early evidence suggests that in the
^UK, US and Germany, women have been more likely to either lose their jobs or experience reductions in income, largely due to their overrepresentation in precarious and hard-hit sectors, at the same time as caring responsibilities have intensified for many.9 Meanwhile, there are reports that domestic violence has increased under lockdown.10
Properly mitigating the impacts of these structural gender inequalities means incorporating gendered perspectives and female voices into emergency and long-term strategies.^

Thanks for your work OP

Thanks op. The whole thing has felt retrograde and male dominated.

There are strong, forthright women in STEM. My linkedin feed is full of them.