Framing this week’s discussion
Whether it’s in the newsroom, Hollywood, in front of the camera or behind it, women are not equally represented in media:
The media industry is just one-third women, a number that only decreases for women of color.
In the broadcast news sector alone, work by women anchors, field reporters and correspondents is only 25.2 percent.
In 2017, women penned 37 percent of bylined news articles and opinion pieces about reproductive issues in the nation’s 12 most widely circulated newspapers and news wires.
Women accounted for just 17 percent of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors who worked on the top-grossing 250 domestic films of 2016.
When there are more women behind the camera or at the editor’s desk, the representation of women onscreen is better: Films written or directed by women consistently feature a higher percentage of female characters with speaking roles.
Women have never accounted for more than 33 percent of speaking roles in the top 100 films in any given year for the past decade.
Only 4.3 percent of directors on 1,100 top films in the past decade were women.
For this week’s module, you watched “Women and Media: What Will It Take”, a full panel discussion about the representation of women in the media industry itself.
https://youtu.be/hIUeGozKP8o
On this week’s discussion board, answer the following questions:
Do you agree with the panelists in the video? Why/why not?
For men in the industry, what do you think the solution may be to empower them to change how many women work in the industry in leadership and how women are portrayed in leadership roles in the media?
What was your biggest takeaway from the panel discussion?
