Women CAN represent themselves BETTER with Independent Media

Post # 4 - Ricky

In mainstream news media in our country, women are very often overlooked, taken advantaged of and simply ignored, in relation to the predominantly male run influence in the network ranks. This has been going on for decades, even up until now. Carol Jenkins, said in as recent as 2007 that “The Invisible Majority, which are the women in this country who account for 51 percent of the population, yet own less than 5 percent of television stations and 6 percent of radio stations.” This sadly depicts how low and unimportant their roles are and how little room they have for growth into levels of executive positions. Carol, later goes on to break it down into different job categories and describe how unrealistic it is for women. “As troublesome as that figure is, the truly disturbing numbers are the percentages of women working for the 94 percent of companies owned and run by men: women comprise only 10 percent of general managers, only 15 percent of programmers, and only 15 percent of the on-air talent.”

Another sad reality is that when a woman finally gets recognized and achieves a top level position, the men below her in authority says “Who did she have to sleep with to get that promotion?”. Virtually, a woman would never truly be respected whether she is in low, medium, or executive level by her male counterparts. Even the dying business of newspapers, still has a White male dominated work environment and lack of female influence. The “Women in Media Fact Sheet” website says “At daily newspapers in the U.S., women and people of color remain under-represented. Nearly 90 percent of reporters/writers and newsroom supervisors are white and about two-thirds are male. Hundreds of newspapers in this country employ NO minorities as full-time staff.” Although the newspaper industry is losing a lot of money due to people getting their news electronically nowadays, they are laying off a massive amount of people. These people must be either minorities or women, since all of the White males are still employed.

In media we see a never ending cycle of this business model, and the message of women and men being unequal is even embedded in the young minds of toddlers who watch television programs. “In television for kids, male characters appear at about twice the rate of female characters. Animated programs in particular are more likely to portray male characters. In a study of G-rated films from 1990-2005, only 28 percent of the speaking characters (both live and animated) were female. Eighty-five percent of the characters were White.” When young children, especially minorities and little girls sees this, they will grow up to think that this is a normal way of life and that White men are supposed to surpass them everywhere in the world. So they grow up and accept the mentality that they are somehow inferior and subordinate to men around them.

A large number of women organizations have seen this unfair treatment of the mainstream media and they rightfully decided to create and distribute their own form of media that represents them and is made directly for them without any hidden agenda from a man. I found a few great women news media organizations. The first one is called “Solidarity”, they are a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist organization as stated on their website and they were founded in 1986 which happens to be the year I was born. So I can only imagine all of the issues and struggle issues that women faced that they covered over the last 25 years. The fact that they identify themselves as an “Anti-racist organization” to me shows that they employ and truly represent women and people of all nationalities. On their website they say “Within our group, we are trying to foster cultural diversity, flexible practice, and straight-forward socialist politics. We are activists in many grassroots movements. We are members of unions, where we oppose corporations as well as bureaucratic "business unionism." We are involved in solidarity with the people of Central and South America, Indonesia Iraq, the Balkans and Palestine, and many other countries, where we fight against U.S. aggression and imperialism. We fight for an ecologically balanced society. We include activists of color and we work in solidarity with people of color organized independently fighting for dignity and power and self determination.” They publish bimonthly pamphlets and post articles and other important social information on their website. They truly represent the voices of the voiceless in my opinion after reading a few of the great articles on their website.

Another great independent women news organization that I found was “Colorlines: News for Action”. On their website they identify themselves as “A daily news site offering award-winning reporting, analysis, and solutions to today's racial justice issues.” Colorlines has been building a base for real journalism for racial justice since 1998, first as a print magazine and then as a daily news site. They cover a wide variety of issues from the media, gender and sexuality, immigrants rights, to even the occupy protest around the nation. Also according to their website, Colorlines also host the bi-annual Facing Race conference, the largest multi-racial gathering in the country for organizations and individuals committed to change.

My third female alternative site is a Canadian women’s organization that has a website called “Women & Environment: International Magazine. They were founded in 1976 by a group of professors. On their website they describe themselves as a “Canadian Magazine that examines women's multiple relations to their environments - natural, built and social - from feminist and anti-racist perspectives.” W.E.I. is now one of the longest surviving feminist magazines in Canada with feminist writers, editors and readers.

Image Courtesy of feministblogs.org