On Tuesday, December 7th, the Louis Nucéra library organized a day of discussion on the theme of the invisibility of women in the media, including a round table titled “Women and Radio: Investigation Feedback” which our team attended.
Five researchers discussed the work they conducted as part of the International Global Media Monitoring Project survey—an authoritative investigation on the role of women in news media.
Their research focused on the morning news programs of several French radio stations: RMC, France Info, France Culture, and France Bleu Azur. The least that can be said is that, on radio, women are far from being as well represented as men.
What are the findings regarding the position of women in French radio stations?
Laetitia Biscarrat, from the Université Côte d’Azur, who facilitated this round table, first reviewed the figures concerning the representation of women on the radio.
Radio is indeed the most unbalanced media in terms of the male-female ratio since 64% of radio journalists are men, compared to 58% in the press. On television, parity is almost achieved. In addition, only 19% of the guests on radio shows are women.
The five researchers revisited the studies they conducted by examining the morning shows of these French radio stations for the same finding: these programs are all punctuated with stereotypes about women—blatant or subtle, references to gender, misogynistic reflections, and stark contrasts between female and male presence in these shows.
“Wife of,” “daughter of,” “she was shopping,” “mothers”… Here are some of the expressions found in the morning shows analyzed by the researchers. These expressions all clearly refer to gender, prompting Evi Basile-Comaille, a researcher at Aix-Marseille University, to question, “Would journalists have used these terms if the people concerned had been men? Not sure.”
In short, this afternoon of discussion once again reminded us that women are far from being represented as equally as men in the media.
