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BUSINESS
WORKPLACE EQUALITY
Text by SARITA RAO
Photography by MIKE ZENARI
MALE BIAS IN THE MEDIA If the glass ceiling is still firmly in place for women journalists, how much does the news we consume realistically reflect the gender balance in society?
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t’s not often the media puts the spotlight on itself when it comes to gender equality in both the industry and the content it produces. The recent #MeToo campaign uncovered a plethora of stories on sexual harassment and discrimination of women working globally in the media sector, naming and shaming some big corporations. But personal experience does not offer concrete statistical analysis. The Global Media Monitoring Project does. Produced every five years, its reports cover 114 countries including Luxembourg, more than 22,000 publications and content from 26,000 journalists. It paints a clear picture of the glass ceiling not just for women journalists, but for the content the media produces. The latest GMMP report found that globally 37% of journalists are women, with a closer gender balance in TV. However, the majority of female TV presenters were aged 19-34 years, with almost none over the age of 60. In Luxembourg, the report, written by the NGOs Cid Fraen an Gender and Conseil National des Femmes du Luxembourg, found a relatively even split between male and female journalists in most media, with the exception of TV, where the male:female ratio was 70:30, and online, where only 14% of journalists were women. It also revealed that fewer women journalists covered stories on government, politics and economics. “The media sector is not growing evenly in Luxembourg. The people with responsibility for choosing topics, the desk editors, are still overwhelmingly men,” says the campaign group’s Christa Brömmel. February 2018
French-born journalist Marie-Laure Rolland began her career as a journalist with Luxemburger Wort’s economic desk, before heading up the cultural section of the newspaper from 2013. She left the group last year following heavily reported editorial changes. “If we consider the organisational charts of the main newspapers in Luxembourg, then it seems to be clear that there is a glass ceiling for female journalists in Luxembourg. The majority of executive responsibilities are controlled by men,” she says. A glance at the rolls at the Luxembourg Press Council reveals that only one national media publication is run by a woman, Danièle Fonck of Tageblatt.
THE MOTHERHOOD BARRIER Rolland will be participating in the launch of Reporter.lu in March this year. Co-founded by journalists Christoph Bumb and Laurence Bervard, Reporter.lu is the newest player in the Luxembourg media landscape, a digital-only publication that is 100% independent from political parties and advertisers. It is financed by its readers and was launched through crowdfunding. Bervard has written for Le Monde, L’Essentiel and Luxemburger Wort on political and economic topics, human
interest and society stories. “Wherever I have worked, female journalists were given the same opportunities as men to tackle big political stories. However, I have seen female journalists marginalised whenever they were less available due to family commitments. It’s also true that in media outlets there are more men than women in management positions. Worse, when I first started the job, I couldn’t help but notice that there were very few women journalists over 35 years [old], and that most of them didn’t have children.” She mentions that many women journalists switch into communications department roles when they start a family. Fonck, a Luxembourger who studied journalism in Paris, concurs on equality of opportunity: “There is no ceiling. Female journalists in Luxembourg have exactly the same possibilities as their male colleagues.” She says that throughout the country’s history, very famous female journalists have dealt with political issues. However, she does admit: “There are some ancestral reflexes in society which you cannot change in the short-term. The so-called superiority of men has been promoted during centuries in our old-fashioned religious education.”
LAURENCE BERVARD Media sector is not flexible enough
“ I HAVE SEEN FEMALE JOURNALISTS MARGINALISED WHENEVER THEY WERE LESS AVAILABLE DUE TO FAMILY COMMITMENTS.”