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The Difference Engine: Gender equality, journalism and the good society

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DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2011.537026

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The Difference Engine

Monika Djerf-Pierre

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 THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE

Gender equality, journalism and the good

society

Monika Djerf-Pierre

In their globally appraised book, The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
(2009) set out to prove statistically what the majority of even moderately progressive
people have held to be true for decades, i.e., (to put it simply) equal societies are better to
live in. Perhaps the key argument of their book is not, however, that an equal society entails
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better living conditions for the poor. The groundbreaking and politically transformative
thesis is rather that an equal society is in fact better for everyone. Even the wealthy are
relatively better off in a society characterized by a high level of income equality. Equal
societies display lower levels of crime and violence, fewer social problems, better health for
all (longer life expectancy, lower levels of mental illness and drug use), as well as higher
levels of social trust, happiness, and satisfaction with life. Thus, income equality is an
important determinant of a Good Society.
The Spirit Level primarily focuses on income equality; gender equality is addressed
only in passing. That said, gender equality, too, is found to be positively associated with
income equality, although the association is not very strong. Other cultural qualities of
good societies, such as the quality of the media or the freedom of the press, are not
addressed in The Spirit Level. However, in another large cross-national comparative study,
Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris (2003) put forward the principal importance of “culture”
(defined as values, norms, and attitudes) in achieving gender equality in a society. Their
basic claim is that egalitarian attitudes are systematically related to the actual conditions in
men’s and women’s lives. And, in a related vein, Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris and Christian
Welzer (2002) explore the influence of economic and cultural variables on the proportion of
women in parliament and on a society’s level of democracy. They conclude that the process
of modernization drives cultural changes that encourage both the rise of women in public
life and the development of democratic institutions.
To a media scholar who sees gender equality in the media and elsewhere as
essentially a human rights issue (Margaret Gallagher 2004, p. 156ff) and an indispensable
feature of a Good Society, these studies raise a series of important questions relevant to
the field of feminist media studies. As media are the prime vehicles for the construction
and circulation of cultural values in the current era of mediatization, the relationship
between gender equality in journalism and the fundamental political, social, and
economical institutions in society, for instance, becomes a subject worthy of rigorous study.

Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2011

ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/11/010043-51
q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2011.537026
 44 MONIKA DJERF-PIERRE

How is gender equality in the media related to social development in other areas? Do media
and journalism matter?
This essay takes current research on gender and journalism as a point of departure in
addressing these questions. The conclusion coming out of the review is that if we are to
understand if and how the media function as a “difference engine,” a motor that reproduces
or reforms the gender order in society, we must carry out more extensive, systematic, and
comparative analyses of gender in the field of journalism. Also, the data must be related to
institutional arrangements in politics, the economic sphere of society, and culture in
different regions and countries of the world. Large-scale comparative analyses are necessary
both in explaining the variations in gender representation in the media, and in
understanding the role of the media in creating the Good Society. The essay ends with an
explorative analysis, empirically pinpointing some of these aspects.

Here, There, and Everywhere: The Gendered Quality of Journalism

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In the context of the Good Society, and particularly when gender equality is the
objective, Sweden and the other Nordic countries are often put forward as world leaders
(Lena Wängnerud & Marcus Samanni 2009). In all of the established international ranking
systems of gender equality, the Nordic countries are usually found atop the list. Obviously,
it is also fair to regard Sweden and the other Nordic countries as something of
“success stories” when it comes to achieving gender equality in journalism as elsewhere. On
the other hand, many of the gains in the field of journalism in the Nordic countries
were made in the 1980s and early 1990s, and after that progress has been slow or even
stagnant (Monika Djerf-Pierre 2007). Gender equality in journalism remains a problem
(Monica Löfgren-Nilsson 2010); when it is addressed it has often been defined as an issue of
“human resource management” or “organizational diversity” where women have to be
“quoted” in the news or coached (trained) to perform like male journalists. At the same
time, women are, in fact, still often obligated to make a difference in the newsroom.
The Nordic experience provides a useful illustration of the meanings and implications
of the “feminization” of journalism. It also offers an illustrative example of the post-
feminism era experienced in many western countries (Amanda Lotz 2001). With regard to
the US and the UK, Deborah Chambers, Linda Steiner and Carole Fleming (2007, p. 13) argue
that the increasing number of women in journalism has coincided with the depoliticized,
market-led “post-feminist” redefinition of news. Journalism in the post-feminism era is not
simply a “backlash” where previous gains are suddenly lost (Yvonne Tasker & Dianne Negra
2007, p. 1). Instead, as Angela McRobbie (2004, p. 255) points out, feminism is invoked
“as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved, in order to
install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasize that it is no longer needed.”
The meaning and consequences of feminization and the attendant challenges of
post-feminism for journalism has been a major research theme and a framework of
interpretation for feminist journalism scholars in the last couple of decades. In this
endeavor, feminist research on journalism has to a large extent employed discourse and
text analyses. Amanda Lotz and Sharon Marie Ross (2004, p. 192) point out that feminist
television criticism primarily focuses on texts within a critical historical and cultural context.
This is essentially true for current research on gender and journalism as well, and when
reviewing the articles that have been published in Feminist Media Studies during the last ten
years, this feature becomes particularly evident.
 THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE 45

There has, however, also been a series of interesting feminist studies of the
production of journalism and of gendering in newsrooms (e.g., Carolyn Byerly & Karen Ross
2004; Chambers, Steiner & Fleming 2004; Marjan De Bruin & Karen Ross 2004;
Löfgren-Nilsson 2010; Louise North 2009). Some have utilized the “appropriation” of Pierre
Bourdieu’s theories (see Toril Moi 2001) when understanding journalism as a gendered
institutional practice (Djerf-Pierre 2007; Margareta Melin 2009; Chyun-Fung Shi 2001).
However, feminist studies on journalism—textual or otherwise—still tend to focus primarily
on women, highlighting women’s coping strategies and experiences in news production.
But, there is now a growing body of research about men as men and on the (changing)
implications and meaning of masculinity in the journalistic field. Studies on masculinities in
the media and in journalism represent an intriguing field of research that deserves further
development (e.g., John Beynon 2004; Mia Consalvo 2003).
In the last decade, feminist journalism studies has produced excellent research when
it comes to highly contextualized, in-depth analyses of media content and newsrooms.
Clearly, we’re not “just counting” anymore, as the allegation was in the 1980s and early
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1990s. Even so, my own conviction is that “simple counting” actually is neither simple nor
atheoretical, but instead a theoretically and empirically challenging endeavor. Counting is
required in revealing structural horizontal and vertical segregation and is an indispensable
tool in media monitoring and advocacy (Gallagher 2001a, 2004). Counting does also help to
put gender on the agenda in media organizations, as well as in public debate. On the other
hand, counting must, as Gallagher (2001b, p. 12) pointed out in the first issue of Feminist
Media Studies in 2001, be combined with an analysis of the underlying forces that condition
media content if we are to develop constructive strategies for change. In this area, research
is clearly still lacking. My proposition for an expanded research agenda for the years to
come is, thus, not fewer studies with a quantitative “bent”—quite the contrary—but these
studies need to draw on more sophisticated approaches in that field of research.
There are now numerous studies substantiating that journalism is still a gendered
practice in every part of the world (Byerly & Ross 2004; Cynthia Carter & Linda Steiner 2004;
Annabelle Sreberny 2005). This pattern was evidenced in one of the few large-scale
comparative studies on gender representation in the news, the Global Media Monitoring
Project (GMMP). The GMMP is the collaborative effort of researchers and activists around the
globe; one full day of news stories in the press, radio, and television (and now on the
Internet) in over seventy countries was monitored and coded into variables such as gender
of the news subjects, news presenters and reporters, topics, and the presence of
stereotypes in the news. Since the first publication of the GMMP report in 1995 (and
thereafter in 2000, 2005, and 2010), some progress, albeit slow, has been made with respect
to improving gender representation in the news. On closer inspection, large differences
between countries appear. In fact, differences within regions seem to be larger than
between regions, a pattern which raises the question about what factors influences
women’s access to the news agenda (Maria Edström 2008). In 2005, there were 26 percent
female news subjects in South Africa, compared to 9 percent in Kenya; 12 percent in Austria
and Hungary compared to 30 percent in Sweden; 14 percent in Thailand and 26 percent in
Bangladesh, and so on. Which factors at the socio-economic, political, and cultural (the
gender culture, religious heritage, and media system) levels produce various conditions and
outcomes for men and women in the news? Media scholars know that gender
representation in the news never only “reflects” real life conditions in politics or in social life,
but rather represents it. But what steers the difference engine that maintains the gender
 46 MONIKA DJERF-PIERRE

order in the news in various parts of the world? To unravel this, more comparative research
is necessary.

Same, Same but Different: Unraveling the Workings of the Difference

Engine
As Liesbet van Zoonen points out, the “gendered structure of media production
extends from micro and meso to macro levels” (van Zoonen 2003, p. 62). Still we lack
systematic comparative and comparable data on these structures. How do the media
and journalism help to facilitate and sustain the “inequality regimes” that work at micro-,
meso- and macro-levels of society (cf. Joan Acker 2006)?
Feminist media research has so far been relatively uninterested in “large n” studies
(extensive data collections in a very large number of countries) in comparative research, at
least when it comes to explanatory analyses. The GMMP is a good starting point for such
studies as it uniquely collects comparative data on gender representations in the news at
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the global level. The GMMP data can be combined with other data sets, adding information
on the political system, the economy, cultural institutions, and social structure in different
countries in the enquiry.
To substantiate this point, I will conclude this essay by presenting an exploratory
analysis of the relationship between gender equality in journalism on the one hand and

0.85

Sweden
0.80 Norway

0.75
Gender gap

South Africa Belgium

0.70 Austria

China
0.65
Kenya Chile

0.60

0.55 Nepal

5 10 15 20 25 30 35
GMMP % female news subjects

FIGURE 1
Plot of the percentage of female news subjects (GMMP) and the Gender Gap Index
Note: See Note 1 for information on the data sets used and the construction of the Gender Gap
Index. Indicators of Gender Equality in the News are from the GMMP study 2005 (Who Makes
the News?; The Global Media Monitoring Project 2005, Appendix D).
 THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE 47

various indicators of Gender Equality and of the Good Society on the other. As is the case in
The Spirit Level, the analysis employs simple correlations (Pearson’s r ) to establish the
association between variables. Correlation is a bivariate measure of association (strength) of
the relationship between two variables (G. David Garson 2008). It varies from 0 (random
relationship) to 1 (perfect linear relationship) or 21 (perfect negative linear relationship).
A positive correlation means that a high score on one variable is associated with a high
score on the other (for example, a high level of gender equality in a country might be
associated with a high level of income equality).
To begin, Figure 1 shows a plot of the percentage of female news subjects and the
Gender Gap Index (measuring the level of gender equality) in seventy-five countries. For
illustrative purposes, some of the country labels are shown in the plot. The correlation
between the two variables is 0.467*** which means that there is a fairly strong positive
linear relationship between the percentage of female news subjects and the level of gender
equality. Furthermore, Table 1 shows that there is generally a strong and positive
correlation between all Gender Equality Indicators, including the Gender Equality Attitude
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Scale used by Inglehart and Norris (2003), and the ratio of female news subjects in the news.

Table 1
Bivariate correlation of three indicators of female representation in the news and a set of indicators of
Gender Equality and the Good Society (Pearson’s r)
Gender Equality in the
News Indicators
Female news subjects in
the news (all stories), Female reporters in the
Gender Equality Indicators percent news, percent
Gender Gap Index (1) .467*** .228
Women’s political rights (2) .160 .150
Women’s social rights (2) .295* .182
Women’s economic rights (2) .302** .169
% Women in parliament .400*** .090
2006 (3)
Year for women’s right to vote (3) 2.081 2.248*
Gender Equality Scale (attitudes) (4) .394** .187
Good Society Indicators
(5)
Corruption Index (Transparency International) .369*** .085
Democracy Index (Freedom House/Polity) (6) .244* .145
Freedom of the press .319** .086
(Freedom House) (7)
Gini (income equality) (8) 2.027 .048

*p ,0.05, **p ,0.01, ***p ,0.001.

Indicators of Gender Equality in the News are from the GMMP study 2005 (The Global Media Monitoring
Project, www.whomakesthenews.org). Seventy-five countries in Asia (eleven), Europe (twenty-four), North
America (two), Latin America (eleven), the Caribbean (five), the Middle East (two), the Pacific (two), and
Africa (eighteen) are included. All the other indicators and indexes are available to scholars through the
QOG-institute (www.qog.pol.gu.se) (Teorell et al. 2010).1 Data are not available for all countries which
means that the number of countries included in the analyses varies between different studies and measures:
(1) sixty-six countries; (2) seventy-four; (3) seventy-two; (4) fifty-three; (5) seventy-four; (6) seventy-one; (7)
seventy-four; and (8) seventy-three countries. For ease of interpretation The Freedom of the Press Index has
been reversed so that higher numbers equal greater freedom (it was originally constructed so that 0
indicates greatest possible freedom). The Gini coefficient has also been reversed, so that higher numbers
indicate a more equal income distribution (it was originally constructed so that 0 indicates a perfectly equal
income distribution whereas 1 indicates the opposite).
 48 MONIKA DJERF-PIERRE

As expected, the gender order in society is strongly linked to the presence of women as
subjects in press, radio, and television news.
Interestingly, however, the other indicator of gender equality in the news—the
proportion of female reporters—is not associated with any of the indicators chosen to
measure the gender equality. The only statistically significant correlation we can find is with
the year when women got the right to vote ( –.248*). This means that although the age of
female suffrage means something for the presence of female reporters, the ratio of women
reporting the news is mainly determined by something else other than the level of gender
equality in society.
The next question to be explored is to what extent indicators of the Good Society
relate to gender representation in the news (Table 1). The main conclusion here is that an
association definitively exists; a high level of female news subjects is associated with low
levels of corruption, a high level of democracy, and a high degree of freedom of the press.
The ratio of female reporters in the news shows, however, no significant correlation with
any of the Good Society indicators. Furthermore, the main determinant of a Good Society
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identified in The Spirit Level—income equality (here measured by the Gini coefficient)—
appears to be completely unrelated to Gender Equality in the news.
To conclude, gender equality in the news is in some ways related to social
development in other areas. The presence of female news subjects is positively associated
with gender equality and with other significant aspects of a Good Society as well.
Correlation does not, however, necessarily mean causation. To prove that the quality of
media and journalism does matter in the sense that it influences other factors, the
interactions between variables must be analyzed further, and more advanced statistical
methods must be employed. This is a challenging but potentially rewarding direction for
future research in the area of feminist media studies.

NOTE
1. The indicators used to measure the gender representation in the news (the percentage
female news subjects in the news, the percentage female news subjects in political news—
stories on politics and government—and the percentage female reporters in news stories)
are from the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005 (Who Makes the News?).
All the other datasets used in the analysis are available through the Quality of
Government Institute (QOG) (www.qog.pol.gu.se) (Teorell et al. 2010). The QOG Institute
promotes research on the quality of government and its correlates by offering access to
cross-national comparative data.
The Gender Gap Index is developed by the World Economic Forum (http://www.
weforum.org/gendergap). All scores are reported on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 representing
maximum gender equality (cross-section 2005 ). The study measures the extent to which
women have achieved full equality with men in five critical areas: economic participation;
economic opportunity; political empowerment; educational attainment; health and well-
being.
The indicator for Women’s Economic, Political and Social Rights is from David
L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards (2010) (dataset version: 2010.05.17; cross-section:
2002 – 2006, year varies by country). The indicator sets out to measure the extensiveness of
flaws pertaining to women’s rights and government practices towards women or how
 THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE 49

effectively the government enforces the laws. The scale varies from 0– 3 with (0) indicating
that there are no economic/social/political rights for women under law and systematic
discrimination based on sex may be built into the law, to (3) where all or nearly all of
women’s economic/social/political rights are guaranteed by law.
The percentage of women in parliament is from the OECD—The Gender, Institutions
and Development Database, which contains comparative data on gender equality. The data
refer to a single house, or the weighted average of both upper and lower houses, where
relevant (cross;section 2006; source: UNDP Human Development Report ).
The Gender Equality Scale was developed by Inglehart and Norris (2003) using data
from the World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org) and aggregated
individual level World Values Survey data to the country level. The value of each
observation is the country mean of the variable in question (cross-section: 1996 – 2008,
varies by country). The Gender Equality Scale is a 0 –100 scale composed of four items:

. “On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do” (agree coded low).
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. “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” (agree coded low).

. “A university education is more important for a boy than a girl” (agree coded low).

. “Do you think that a woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled or is this not necessary?”
(agree coded low).

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is from Transparency International (http://www.

transparency.org/) (cross-section 2000– 2007, year varies by country). The CPI score relates
to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people, risk analysts, and the
general public, and ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt).
The Democracy Index is from Freedom House/Polity (cross-section: 2000 – 2006, year
varies by country). Scale ranges from 0 – 10, where 0 is least democratic and 10 most
democratic.
The Freedom of the Press Index is from The Freedom House (http://www.
freedomhouse.org) (cross-section: 2002 – 2006, year varies by country). The press freedom
index is computed by adding several component ratings, and the scale ranges from 0 (most
free) to 100 (least free).
The Gini Index of income equality comes from UNU-WIDER—World Income Inequality
Database (http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/Database/en_GB/database/) (cross-section:
1957 – 2005, year varies by country). The Gini coefficient varies theoretically from 0 (perfectly
equal distribution of income) to 100 (the society’s total income accrues to only one
person/household unit).

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Monika Djerf-Pierre is professor in the Department of Journalism, Media and

Communication at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her main fields of interest
are journalism (environmental journalism, journalism history, political journalism, the
sociology of journalism), political communication, and gender and the media
(including studies of gender in media organizations, the media field and media elites,
and gender representation in journalism). E-mail: monika.djerf-pierre@jmg.gu.se

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