EU examines the role of women in the media
Little progress has been made in terms of women’s equality in the workplace and portrayal in the media, a EU conference concluded today, on the eve of International Women’s Day.
The Brussels conference debated job placement, stereotypes and portrayals of women 10 years after the United Nations agreed on a plan to improve gender equality.
An EU report released last month found that, while gender employment and education gaps were narrowing, the gender pay gap “remained almost unchanged” at around 15% across the 25-nation EU.
Debate at the conference focused on the media sector and the argument that women remain sidelined.
Dominique Alduy, outgoing president of the European Newspapers Publishers Association, explained that the battle of equality at the workplace remained an uphill battle. She explained that during her 10-year tenure, she found her industry’s management level continued to be dominated by men.
“Sometimes I would start out (a speech) with ‘ladies’ and realise that there were only men in the room,” Alduy said.
Women represent only about 35% of jobs in the media industry, said Vladimir Spidla, EU commissioner in charge of employment and equal opportunities.
He said, however, that some 90% of temporary or part-time jobs – in production, journalism or administration – in the sector are held by women.
“In France, you are not going to find women at the top of the media pyramid,” Alduy said. She added that the Gender Observatory in France found that within a 24 -hour time-frame only about 20% of television programming dealt with women, either in subject matter or in person, apart from still widespread use of women in advertising.
Patrik Oksanen, the deputy editor-in-chief of a regional news department from Swedish broadcaster SVT, said his station decided four years ago to make it a policy to produce more balanced news coverage.
As a result SVT’s female viewership has grown, Oksanen said, and other stations are competing to implement more gender equality tactics, such as assigning a reporter to gender issues full-time.
The EU will further mark Women’s Day with a symposium tomorrow on violence and women at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, as well as a political debate by MEPs there.
