Women
in politics deserve recognition in media
Katie Plourd
All throughout the world women are stepping up in top political positions, asserting
their power and making headlines.
Yet in America, where women have had the rights and opportunities other women
in the world have been deprived of, we have yet to see a woman take the top spots
of power, or at least we don’t hear about it in the news.
Chile and Jamaica recently elected their first woman president and prime minister,
respectively, and throughout the continent of Africa women leaders are gaining
more popularity amongst citizens than American leaders are with Americans. For
months these women have made headlines not just in America, but throughout the
world for their strong leadership skills and placement in powerful roles.
In the United States, we don’t see the same reflection of women with such
power although such leaders exist.
According to the White House Project in 2005, 14 percent of guests on Sunday
morning political talk shows in the United States from November 2004 to July
2005 were women. These females were also less likely to make repeat appearances
on these programs. That number had only gone up by 3 percent since 2001, while
women in top political positions have been on the rise.
Instead of portrayals of women in politically charged roles, the media only shows
women that make “real” news, such as Martha Stewart, who appeared
more in the news in 2004 for her jail-time sting than House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi, D-San Francisco. Instead the media is bombarded with tidbits of Britney,
Angelina and the jailhouse conundrums of the queen of crafts.
The rates of women actually taking on these top positions is the highest it has
ever been. More than 15 percent of Congress is made up of women and 12 out of
the 100 biggest cities in the nation have women as mayors.
The most recent news story on potential presidential nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton,
D-N.Y., in the Los Angeles
Times neglected to report on Clinton’s political aptitude. Rather, the
story was shunned to the entertainment section and was merely a reflection of
Hollywood chatter over what Tinsel Town Democrats thought of the political contender.
Ranging from “too stiff” to “too sexy,” this type of
portrayal of women in politics is debilitating to women.
Since the founding of this country, politics has been a man’s world. The
way women are shown in the media only perpetuates this notion. It’s about
time for these portrayals to change and women to seek leadership roles and be
given the recognition they deserve.
This year a newsmaker aide is attempting to do just that. A new tutorial for
newsmakers and journalists is seeking to address the issue of how politicians
are portrayed in the news.
The video toolkit “Portraying Politics” evaluates production patterns
of women in political news. The program asserts journalists and news program
makers to reflect on the way they currently operate, and to think about ways
to change the gender discrepancies in the news.
If as a nation we can move past the frilly, absent news coverage of U.S. women
with political power and rearrange how the media reflects women, perhaps women
in these roles will stand up make more decisions and play the role of political
leader deserving respect as women throughout the world are beginning to do.
Katie Plourd is a senior journalism major and the managing editor of the Daily
Forty-Niner.
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