Where are all the Women?

This Unit, 2, in our class MDGs, or the Millennium Development Goals, we learned about the social injustices for gender. I decided to research women in the media because it greatly affects how young girls think they are supposed to act or look, and I have personally seen so much imbalance in the media.

Did you know that only 28 percent of writers in the New York Times are women? Gender representation in media all across the world is greatly skewed. Even in countries that are considered to be equal between men and women, such as the United States. In countries that women have almost no rights, it's much much worse.

Yemen is rated the worst country for women in the world. In Yemen, most women have to wear burkas, or face veils when in public. In media, there is a very small percentage of women that are represented. In fact, in 2014, only five percent of main characters were female, and of those characters, many portrayed female stereotypes, such as being obsessed with male attention, being weak, or being less smart than men. Only one percent of published writers in newspapers and books were female, and only two percent of creative staffers on movies were women.

Even in the United States, which is known for having equal rights for both women and men, in advertisements and tv shows, 57% of women are shown in revealing clothing or oversexualized, while only 23% of men are. And this imbalance is not just on screen. Only 14% of writers for prime time television were female last year, and only 8% were directors or producers. This is a ridiculous display of gender inequality in media. There are no viable reasons why the numbers of accurate representations are so skewed towards men.

Both Yemen, voted the worst place for women, and The United States, voted one of the best, have huge issues regarding females in the media and both are greatly uneven. For some reason, there are almost no female directors or producers, and perhaps that is part of the reason why characters in advertisements and television are so inaccurate and inconsistent. There are almost no women controlling the portrayals of women on television, which means they are more often than not just wrong and fake.

Bibliography
Lantagne, Allison. “Gender Roles in Media.” Huffington Post. Huffington Post. June 12, 2016.
Nelson, Gunter. “Measuring Women’s Status in Yemen.” D3 Systems. D3 Systems. September, 2010, June 12, 2016.
“The Worst Countries for Women” USA Today. USA Today. June 13, 2016.