The image of women in the media

The findings of a survey on how women are perceived by the media in Romania.

Christine Leșcu, 25.09.2013, 13:28

“ALTFEM. A campaign for changing the image of women in society” is the title of a project launched two years ago and financed under the EU Operational Programme for Human Resources Development. Carried out by a number of NGOs, the project included a survey on the image of men and women in the media and analysed TV shows, articles and advertising commercials run over a period of several months. In 2011, when the first such survey was conducted, the results were by no means favourable for women. The research was repeated in 2013. Ionut Codreanu, a programme coordinator with ActiveWatch, one of the organisations involved in the ALTFEM project, tells what has changed in these two years as far as the TV coverage of women is concerned:

Ionut Codreanu: “In 2011 we found that few women were involved in televised debates — only around 12%. In 2013, however, we have seen a significant increase in this respect, with more women taking part in talk-shows. There are several explanations for this. At a political and governmental level, women are under-represented, so it is difficult to invite a lot of female politicians to television shows, when there are so few of them. In 2011, the men to women ratio in the political class was 15 to 1, but in 2013 we see a slight increase in the number of female politicians. The men to women ratio in the media was fairly balanced in 2011. However, slight imbalances were noted in 2013. Although there are a lot of female students studying journalism, this is not reflected in the number of female journalists on TV.”

We also asked Ionut Codreanu whether there is a change in the discourse of the female guests in television shows compared to two years ago.

Ionut Codreanu: “In 2011 as well as today, the personal agenda prevails. In most cases, women are on television to present aspects from their personal life. Although things have improved in this respect since 2011, this trend still exists.”

The research also looked at gender stereotypes, sexual innuendos and references to physical appearance during TV shows. Ionut Codreanu tells us what the findings are.

Ionut Codreanu: “The number of phrases containing stereotypes has decreased significantly. There were fewer references to the traditional way in which gender relations are viewed. Another positive aspect is that the number of sexual innuendoes has decreased. In 2011, for instance, such phrases were frequent even in news programmes. A worrying aspect is that references to the physical appearance of a person have become more frequent. This year, there has been a rise in the number of shows, particularly in entertainment programmes, which focus very much on the physical appearance of the local celebrities. In such cases, we can talk both about the violation of a person’s private life and self-exposure, because some of the guests of these shows do this voluntarily.”

Looking at the print press, the ALTFEM team has come to the following conclusions: men account for 72% of the editorial staff as opposed to women, who only make up 28%. Women account for 33% of the expert personnel of general interest publications while 65% of them work for tabloids. All in all, the study shows the percentage of male and female experts in the field is almost equal.

However, the number of female experts working in advertising is higher. Women are also more present in the field of household and domestic activities. It seems the image of women reflected in the media is not that far from reality, as seen from the findings of the first gender equality study conducted at EU level and made public by the European Gender Institute within the European Commission. The study has also tackled the issue of equality between men and women at the level of member-states in several fields of activity such as the employment market, education, spare time, government and access to health services. Here is Irina Sorescu, from the Centre for Partnership and Equality, with details about this study.

Irina Sorescu: “Romania is lagging behind in all the chapters tackled in the study with 35% out of 100, on a 1-to-100 scale, where 1 stands for the complete lack of equality and 100 is the highest equality standard between men and women. The sectors where Romania fares worse are spare time and access to government. We are better placed in terms of access to health services and employment.”