By: Emily
President of the Journalism and Women's Symposium, Megan Kamerick, gave a thought provoking TED talk about women’s roles and representation in the media. Kamerick joined JAWS because she wanted female role models and was upset about the lagging status of women in her profession and what it meant for women’s image in the media. Surprisingly, only 24% of the people in the news are women, and stories written by men are often skewed in favor of their sub conscious ideals because news stories are essentially constructed by the writer to portray their ideals of the situation being reported. The Global Media Monitoring project found that news stories written by female reporters are more likely to challenge stereotypes. This information is very important to me and any other female wishing to go into the Media industry because it shows how important to the whole system a variety of views is. Another example of female misrepresentation in the media is the cover of Wired magazine. Women are more likely to be portrayed as victims and more likely to be defined by their body parts, and Wired magazine did just that in one of their issues. They wrote about breast tissue engineering, but the magazine had a provocative image of a woman's breasts as the cover. The change the industry needs can be done by employing and encouraging women to hold top jobs within the industry. A recent global survey found that 73% of the top media management jobs are still held by men. Kamerick states that one way to get more women into leadership is to have more women mentor them. She concluded her talk with a very thoughtful statement explaining that with a variety of views we’d all be better off if we had “the full picture” of stories not skewed by personal bias.
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