2010 MEDIA MONITORING RESEARCH: Women’s perspectives MIA in influential news media

Building on previous studies in both Canada and the US, and with the help of the University of Ottawa’s Media Relations Office, Informed Opinions monitored the commentary pages of six daily newspapers and analyzed the guest lists of three broadcast talk shows for up to two weeks earlier this spring.*

The results echo those documented by both US research and a recent McMaster University study (see below): women’s perspectives are missing in action in some of the highest profile media vehicles most likely to influence Canadians’ opinions on key public policy issues. Both English and French language media chronically under-represent women’s views. Only 16% of the op eds published in the six papers during the period surveyed were written by women, while female columnists represented 15% of the regular contributors in English language dailies, and 23% in French language newspapers.

The National Post reserves considerably more space for commentary than The Globe, The Star or The Citizen. Despite this, women’s voices are even less well represented in the Post (8% of columns and 9% of op eds) than in any of its competitors. Only the French language Le Droit does a poorer job (6%) among the print publications surveyed. In contrast, Le Devoir boasts the most female-friendly numbers, with women’s authorship comprising 53% of the Montreal-based paper’s signed editorials, 25% of its columns, and 20% of its op eds.)

In the sample studied, The Toronto Star represents a study in contrasts: Female columnists made up an impressive 44% of all in-house commentators, outshining all other English language dailies monitored by a significant margin. However, during the same week, not one of the 10 op eds published in The Star’s pages was by a woman.

Although an ad hoc review of The Globe and Mail’s op ed pages last fall found women-penned commentary at 23%, the week studied this spring reflected a significant (and perhaps anomalous) drop to 8%. Female columnists fared slightly better at 18%, however Margaret Wente, who usually writes three times a week, penned only one column in the period studied, no doubt skewing the numbers. (In the previous month-long sample of Globe op ed pages, Ms. Wente’s views comprised fully 40% of the female perspectives expressed on the paper’s comment pages.)

On the electronic front, both French and English public broadcasters did a better job of including women’s voices than the private station. CBC Radio’s The Current featured 31% female guests (11/35) and RDI’s Sans Frontieres managed 29% (15/52), but CTV’s Power Play, which focuses exclusively on federal politics, included only one woman out of 27 guests.

The dramatic gender gap has serious public policy implications in that the issues presented in these forums both reflect and influence government policy and priorities. The absence of women’s perspectives means that discussions of issues affecting women differently – from health care and labour practices to societal violence and participation in the third sector – fail to benefit from women’s informed opinions.

*Included in the sample were The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Ottawa Citizen, CBC Radio’s The Current and CTV’s Power Play. Complementary data were also collected from French language media outlets Le Devoir, Le Droit and the RDI program, Sans Frontieres. Each paper was monitored for a minimum of one week, and published between 11 and 35 op eds during the period studied. The overall number of female versus male voices in the form of columns, op eds, signed editorials (which appear in the two French language dailies), and talk show guests was 74 to 288, or 20%.