Media and gender

Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media. Feminist writers, largely gaining prominence in the 1967s during second wave feminism, began examining the relationship between media and the perpetuation of misogyny and sexism, criticizing the Western canon for providing and promoting an exclusively white male world view. Notable feminists include Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, bell hooks, and Stuart Hall. These feminists typically perceived gender as a social construct, which is not only reflected in artistic work but also perpetuated by it. Until fairly recently, feminists have mainly directed their studies to gender representations in literature. Recently, a new wave of academic studies focused on gender representations in modern society and culture (such as in the film, advertisement, and cultural industries). Numbers of women in media professions such as journalism are growing: as of 2018 in the United States, 41.7% of the newsroom employees were women; the proportion of women journalists in online-only news organizations even reached 47.8%. However, the media is and has been statistically dominated by men, who hold the vast majority of power positions. Few women have been in leading positions; they made up only 28.3% of the television news directors and 30.5% of the managing editors. Today, many news organizations are striving for gender parity on their employees. A large number of international institutions and nonprofit organizations are advocating for gender equality in the media workplace.