Women and Media: A Critical Introduction

Women and Media is a thoughtful cross–cultural examination of the ways in which women have worked inside and outside mainstream media organizations since the 1970s. The book provides an overview of the key issues and developments in feminist media critiques and interventions over the last 30 years, beginning with the extant literature in this growing field and ending with a new study of women s media activism in 20 nations. The authors recount and analyze the first–hand narratives of nearly 100 women media activists whose work has contributed to the making of a feminist public sphere that has moved women leaders and agendas more forcefully into their societies.

This highly original empirical base, and the Model of Women′s Media Action that the authors developed from it, provides a unique account of women s struggles to improve, create, and otherwise employ media in pushing for social change. The text is written in a concise, engaging style, laying out the central concerns about the women media relationship as it has operated in a variety of political/critical contexts. It can be used alongside Women and Media: International Perspectives (2004), by the same authors.

Preface and acknowledgments vi

About the authors ix

1 Introduction 1

Part I Research on women and media: a short history 15

2 Women in/as entertainment 17

3 Images of women in news and magazines 37

4 Women as audience 56

5 Women and production: gender and the political economy of media industries 75

Part II Women, media, and the public sphere: shifting the agenda 97

6 Toward a Model of Women s Media Action 99

7 First path: politics to media 129

8 Second path: media profession to politics 155

9 Third path: advocate change agent 185

10 Fourth path: women s media enterprises 208

11 Conclusion 231

Bibliography 240

Appendix: research participants 273

Name index 278

Subject index 284

Carolyn M. Byerly, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Graduate Program of Mass Communication and Media Studies, Department of Journalism, Howard University, Washington DC (USA). She teaches seminars in mass communication theory, research methods, media effects, and political communication. Recent publications include Women and Media: International Perspectives (edited with Karen Ross, Blackwell, 2004), "After 9/11: Formation of an Oppositional Discourse," ( Feminist Media Studies, Fall 2005), and "Women and the Concentration of Media Ownership" (in R. R. Rush, C.E. Oukrop, and P. J. Creedon, Seeking Equity for Women in Journalism and Mass Communication Education, Erlbaum, 2004).

Karen Ross, Ph.D., is Professor of Mass Communication at Coventry University (UK). She teaches research methods, gender politics and media, and audience studies and is has written extensively on issues of in/equality in communication and culture. Her previous books include: Gender and Newsroom Cultures: Identities at Work (with Marjan de Bruin, Hampton Press, 2004); Women and Media: International Perspectives (edited with Carolyn M. Byerly, Blackwell, 2004); Media and Audiences (with Virginia Nightingale, Open University Press, 2003. She is currently working on two studies relating to press coverage of elections from a gender perspective.

Byerly and Ross not only advocate but succeed in integrating theory with empirical data, and may inspire a few readers to undertake their own media action.
Linda Steiner, Rutgers University

The first comprehensive attempt to theorize women′s media activism and its relationship to social change. An inspiring chronicle of feminist interventions in media systems world–wide, and a welcome bridge between scholarship and practice.
Margaret Gallagher, author of Gender Setting: New Agendas for Media Monitoring and Advocacy

The essays are forays into areas of media studies which will only grow with the growing presence and innovations of women in this central field of contemporary culture.
Midwest Book Review

"A useful outline of global feminist media scholarship for students and practitioners. The book opens up new directions for future research, tempering an engagement with historical development of women′s media activism with attention to the real voices and experiences of current activists and practitioners."
Culture and Policy