1. Television's Invisible Women: A Five-Nation Study of Anchors, Reporters and Correspondents.
- Author
-
Cooper, Anne M.
- Abstract
A study compared the visibility and participation of women working in United States television with that of women working in television in other countries. Video tapes of five consecutive evening news broadcasts in 1986 from the United States, Japan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Jamaica were analyzed for such data as the proportion of women anchors, the proportion of domestic and foreign stories covered by women reporters, and the topics reported on by women reporters as compared to those reported on by men. Findings included: (1) no women reported on any of the five biggest news stories of the week in any of the five countries studied; (2) the percentage of women on the major United States network newscasts has declined from an overall average of 21% in 1979 to 9% on NBC, 10% on ABC, and 13% on CBS in 1986; (3) the United States and Japan made only token use of women reporters for domestic stories (17% and 0%, respectively), while the developing nations had much larger percentages of women reporters (27% in Colombia, 33% in Jamaica, and 66% in Sri Lanka); (4) no overseas stories were reported by women correspondents in any of the five countries; and (5) all of the science/health stories were covered by women, whereas all of the stories on government, crime, and disaster were covered by men. (Three tables of data are included, and 25 references are attached.) (MHC)
- Published
- 1988