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Dylan Young
Rodgers, Yonamine, Washington
Senior Inq
15 February 2016
The Biggest Problem Facing Women
Media has become a major part of societys day to day life, with many too glued
to their phones or the television to do much of anything else. We constantly see the
messages from the media, every little snippet of news that is accredited to someone is a
piece of news. However, there is a great disparity between who is feeding us this news,
this huge disparity is the representation, or lack thereof, of women in the media. If any
progress is to be made towards equity the representation in media gap needs to be
closed.
Womens fight for equity didnt stop after women's suffrage back in 1920, they
continue to fight for it in other aspects. In media, Men receive 62% of byline and other
credit in print, internet, tv and wire news according to a 2015 report on women in US
media. This shows just far weve come towards parity, but it also shows just how far we
have to go because 62% is still a far reach from equal 50% representation. In the same
report we see stats like how 71% of CBS evening broadcasters are male, and 68% of
the bylines for the New York Times are from males. The importance of this is it shows
the gap in big name media sources; whereas, smaller media sources like Chicago Sun
Times exceed parity at 55% women bylines. The lack of representation in media shuts
down the voice of women, ultimately oppressing women and halting progress towards
equity in media, and in general, for women.

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A large contributor to the lack of representation in media is the stereotype that

women talk too much is common in many languages, including English. Many
languages and cultures have phrases that suggest a less talkative woman is better, or
that women just talking too much. However, when two Canadian researchers looked
over sixty-three studies about the amount of talking in the US, in only two of those
studies did women talk more than men. This is important because this clearly
disapproves the ingrained stereotype against women. Similar studies have proved that
men typically dominate conversation in New Zealand and in traditional relationships.
This means that men arent just talking more than women in the United States, but in
other countries as well. It also shows that even in personal, private, relationships that
the men talk more than the women; which is important to know that women arent just
quieter in business or public place, but also in private, more intimate space.
To continue fighting for equity wont be easy, with many thinking that such a fight
ended with women's suffrage, but we need to reach parity in the representation in order
be one step closer to equity. To do so we need to make the facts about the disparity
more prominent and common knowledge, these facts have a lot of startling information
that needs to be shared to the public. Also we need to fade out the stereotype of women
talking too much, that way the argument that women , if there were parity, would
dominate the conversation on media. Similar to the facts about the disparity in media,
the facts disproving this stereotype of women needs to be made common
knowledge.We also need to stop using all the sayings and phrases that perpetuate this
stereotype because it is simply not true. The fight for womens equality is far from over,

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but we need to take a big step in the right direction by closing the gap in representation
in media.