In the classroom but not the newsroom: A qualitative examination of why women leave

journalism jobs

Submitted to Newspaper Research Journal by:

CONTACT: Tracy Everbach, Ph.D.

Assistant professor
Department of Journalism and Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism
University of North Texas
P.O. Box 311460
Denton, Texas 76203-1460
Everbach@unt.edu
(940) 369-7446

Craig Flournoy, Ph.D.

Assistant professor
Southern Methodist University
Division of Journalism
P.O. Box 750113
Dallas, Texas 75275
cflourno@mail.smu.edu
(214) 768-3395
Why are women leaving journalism?

Since the 1980s, women have composed the majority of undergraduate students in

university journalism and mass communication programs, and their numbers in these

disciplines continue to grow. In their most recent survey of journalism and mass

communication students in college programs, Becker and his co-authors reported that

nearly two-thirds of undergraduates and masters students are women. As journalism

professors at two Texas universities, we observe daily in our classes that the majority of

our students are female.1

Despite this trend, the ratio of women to men working in professional newsrooms

remains the reverse of college classrooms. The American Society of Newspaper Editors

reported in its 2005 annual survey that only 37 percent of newsroom employees are

women.2 The most recent American Journalist Survey also reported that one-third of full-

time journalists are women, a percentage that has remained the same since the early

1980s.3 The American Journalist Survey pointed out that women constitute the majority

of journalists with fewer than five years of work experience: 54.2 percent.4 This is the

first time in the ongoing survey that women have outnumbered men in that category and

prompted the authors to note that for women in newsrooms, retentionis an issue.5

Obviously, something is driving women from newsrooms.

Our research question is: Why do some women who study journalism in college

decide later to leave full-time newsroom jobs?

We speculated that low pay, family concerns, and a glass ceiling in newsrooms

might be some factors driving women out of the journalism workforce. We believe it is

crucial that both journalism educators and newsroom managers understand why women

2
leave newsrooms so they can find ways to retain them. Certainly, the trend of female

students dominating journalism programs shows few signs of diminishing. In 2004,

women received 65.4 percent of journalism bachelors degrees, the highest percentage

since the end of World War II. 6 This is commensurate with the rise of female students

overall at United States universities; women earned 57.4 percent of all bachelors degrees

in 2002.7

But many female journalism graduates eventually forsake the profession. We want

to determine the reasons women leave newsroom jobs so we can help our students

succeed as journalists. If the majority of our students are not remaining in journalism for

more than five years, we wondered, where are they going? Some have speculated the

public relations field, where approximately two-thirds of employees are women. 8 Becker

reported that female students are more likely to study PR than male students, but this

phenomenon does not explain why many female journalism graduates leave journalism

jobs.9

Low pay appears to be a factor in womens leaving journalism. Past studies have

shown that women earn less than their male counterparts in many journalism jobs. In a

1996 survey, nearly half of female journalists reported lower salaries than male

journalists with equivalent jobs.10 Salary inequities are common in the overall United

States workforce with women earning 76.2 cents for every dollar a man earns in a

comparable job.11 Women with bachelors degrees or graduate or professional degrees

earn even less than men, 67.4 cents for every dollar earned by a man with the same

educational background.12

3
 The journalism business has a demanding, irregular work schedule often

unfriendly to those raising children or caring for elderly or disabled relatives. Media

companies typically offer few opportunities for job sharing or flexible schedules.

Research by the Newspaper Association of America supports the premise that the

journalism workplace is not conducive to a good work/family balance.13 While most

newsrooms make few if any provisions to accommodate employees needing flexibility in

their schedules, society dictates that women are primarily responsible for family duties.

Starting in the 1950s and through the second and third waves of feminism,

womens presence in the American workforce steadily increased. But in 2005, a study by

the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed a decline in womens participation in the

labor force for the first time in 50 years. Women showed an unprecedented decline

from 1999 to 2005 and the largest declines were among college-educated, married

women with young children and husbands with high salaries.14 College-educated women

were the most likely to opt out.15 Many of these women had young children and might

have left the workforce to care for them, the Federal Reserve report noted.

Women hold few of the top positions in journalism. Men occupy 65.2 percent of

all supervisory positions at daily newspapers.16 In 2003, 18 percent of newspaper

publishers were women, an increase from previous years but still far from gender

equity.17 Women make up 21.3 percent of news directors at U.S. television stations and

24.7 percent of news directors at radio stations.18 A 2003 Editor & Publisher article

featured interviews with several female newspaper publishers who had no children and

who said they might not have reached the top position if they had. One publisher said she

had a stay-at-home husband who cared for their children.19 With a recent wave of female

4
publishers reported in Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry appears to fare

somewhat better than the rest of the corporate world for women who aim for top

positions.20 Catalyst, a nonprofit group that works to expand opportunities for women in

business, reported in 2006 that only eight Fortune 500 chief executive officers are

women. According to Catalyst, gender-based stereotyping is the main barrier to

womens advancement.21 Catalyst president Ilene Lang said that women are held back

from reaching top levels in corporations because they are stereotyped as caretakers while

men are stereotyped as take-charge leaders, both of which are inaccurate

generalizations.22

Women also face the so-called mommy track problem. Women find that if they

leave jobs temporarily to raise children, they lose ground in their careers. When they

return to work, they find they have lost the status they previously held and have to prove

their abilities again.23 As a result, women lose ground in competition for managerial and

executive positions.24 The journalism industry, beset by cutbacks and layoffs in recent

years, has become even less accommodating to women who take time off for family

reasons.

With newspapers cutting staffs and resources since at least 2001, both male and

female employees are wary about the future of media. The newspaper business is

changing into a leaner and more focused industry marked by layoffs and buyouts,

decreasing readership and declining profits.25 Such a climate is not necessarily

encouraging for college graduates hoping to enter newsrooms or journalists trying to

return after taking leaves of absence.

5
Womens journalistic standpoint

During the second wave of feminism in the 1970s, women believed and were told

that they could have a successful career and a family, as many men do. By the 1990s,

many women were questioning this premise, saying that women had different concerns

and responsibilities than men. During the third wave of feminism, cultural feminists

maintained that women were a separate cultural group from men, with different values

and practices. Women have their own standpoint in a patriarchal society that

emphasizes male needs, desires and accomplishments.26 In the male-dominated world of

journalism, womens needs often conflict with the demands of the newsroom.

Newsrooms have hierarchical and bureaucratic structures constructed historically

by male desires, needs and definitions of news.27 Female journalists have reported

different conceptions and constructions of news than men, a phenomenon Van Zoonen

calls a gendered nature of journalism.28 Female and male journalists perceive

journalism differently; that is, they consider different topics, angles, sources and ethics to

be important. For example, so-called masculine journalism focuses on politics, crime,

finance, education and upbringing, while feminine journalism involves human interest,

consumer news, culture and social policy. 29 Achievement in many journalism jobs is

defined by production, which sometimes conflicts with womens ethical commitments to

serve their audiences and personal responsibilities at home. Women have long struggled

to show their commitment to their jobs while also doing meaningful work, goals that

sometimes conflict with masculine ideals of important journalism.30 Studies of female

journalists have shown they often feel under pressure to prove themselves as one of the

6
men, even though they may have different social and personal concerns than men and

different definitions of what is news than the prevailing goals of the organization.31

Method

To find answers to our research question, we conducted individual, in-depth,

standardized-question interviews32 with 17 women who had worked full-time in

journalism after college and subsequently decided to leave their jobs. We chose the

interview method because it provides rich detail and description. The sample members

demographics varied greatly: Their journalism experience ranged from one year to 30

years, and their years of birth ranged from 1949 to 1982. Thirteen of the women were

Caucasian, four were Asian and one was black. Nine were married and eight were

unmarried. Nine had children and eight did not (although not all the married women were

the same women who had children). The women lived throughout the United States,

including New York City; Deptford, New Jersey; Deerfield Beach, Florida; Atlanta,

Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Carrollton, Texas; Lakewood, Colorado;

Phoenix, Arizona; Burbank, California; and South Pasadena, California.

In telephone interviews of one hour to two hours during late 2004 and 2005, we

asked the respondents a consistent list of questions. Many of the respondents talked freely

and openly about subjects beyond the set of questions we asked, and we asked follow-up

questions based on topics they discussed. Most of the questions were open-ended and

designed to spark discussion: a conversation with a purpose, as described by Lindlof.33

Many of the women said they were extremely interested in the topic and wanted to share

their experiences with others and view the results of the study when it was completed.

7
 We found our interview subjects through a snowball sampling method, which we

chose because it would provide a wide cross-section of women.34 Each of us knew

women who had left full-time journalism jobs, and we contacted them through e-mails

and telephone calls and asked them for the names of other women who had left. We also

posted messages on e-mail list servs asking for leads to women who were willing to be

interviewed. Through these methods, we found women who had encountered similar

experiences but came from a variety of backgrounds.

We promised the women anonymity in compliance with the human subjects

approval we received from the University of North Texas Institutional Review Board and

the Southern Methodist University Institutional Review Board. To protect their identities,

we coded the respondents FJ1 through FJ17 (Female Journalist 1 through Female

Journalist 17).

After completing the interviews, we identified the characteristics of each

respondent and analyzed the data. We examined transcripts of the 17 interviews and

identified patterns and themes that related to the various concepts we had identified. This

way, we employed inductive reasoning to find answers to our research question.35

Results

Several of the respondents expressed a passion for writing and journalism but said

they were disappointed by newsroom cultures that failed to accommodate their needs and

desires. They said they were expected as newsroom employees to put their jobs first, and

although they enjoyed journalism as a career, the hours and demands of the newsroom

did not fit well within their lives.

8
 Its very difficult to lead a balanced life in the newspaper business, especially in

a competitive market, said FJ2 , a full-time reporter for 10 years and now works part-

time since having a child. Theres always a story to be covered, a source to be

interviewedyou were supposed to give your blood to the news, and after 10 years of

that, it took its toll. She suggested that a cultural change in newsrooms allowing

flexibility in work schedules might help retain more women. Managerial aversion to this

type of cultural change constitutes a subtle, dismissive attitude, more than anything else,

that I think finally pushes women out the door, FJ2 said.

FJ9, a single mother with two children, said newspaper work hours became

incompatible with her family responsibilities. It was an intolerable work environment. I

had a 2-year-old child who I rarely saw because he was in day care. When FJ9s father

offered her a job in the family business with more stable hours, she accepted. FJ4 left the

newsroom because of her desire to have a child. The intensity I used in my job, I didnt

think it was compatible with having a family. Whatever my vision was of being a wife

and mother wasnt compatible with my vision of being a newspaper reporter. I think of

the types of women in newsrooms, and there werent a lot who were happily married and

had children. FJ16, a married former newspaper reporter, said she enjoys the pace of

staying home with young children. There are days when I think Ive got the best of all

possible worlds because I get to make my own schedule and do what I want to do.

However, when you decide you want to ramp down your professional life in favor of

family, you dont have the same challenges.

Indeed, several respondents said new professional roles they took on did not

ignite the same passion they felt for journalism. Changing the profession they loved was

9
a tradeoff for having more control over their time. FJ13 said that while her newspaper

company was skimpy on resources and pay, she finds the higher-paying advertising

agency where she now works too fake, too commercial compared with journalism. She

said she might eventually return to a newsroom. FJ7 said the culture of her newsroom

made her nervous the unpredictability of it, the long hours, not knowing each day what

youre getting into. She now works in corporate public relations, which is more

predictable, but I dont know that I have a passion for this the way that I hoped to have.

FJ11 reported that she became disillusioned with newspapers after she recognized

managers singled out certain reporters in the newsroom, most of them male, anointing

them what she termed golden boys: reporters who received choice assignments while

the rest of the staff handled the more routine stories. Many of the editors are men and

its the human condition to relate to people who are most like you, FJ11 said. The only

people the top editor would come out into the newsroom to talk to about sports and other

stuff like that were the ones considered the good reporters because they were brash and

had bravado. My reaction to that is that the reporters with brash and bravado were the

ones I trusted the least. Now a city spokeswoman, FJ11 said public relations is not

something I am passionate about. But journalism careers are not conducive to having a

balanced or family life.

Some respondents reported that they found newsroom demands unreasonable.

FJ2, a married mother of one, said most newspaper managers look down upon reporters

and editors who choose to put their families first. And usually, thats women. Her

current part-time job in public relations allows her to have a more balanced life with her

child. Now I see all kinds of things that people do. I always wondered what people did

10
during the day. She said that after a decade in newsrooms she became jaded. FJ8, who

is unmarried, said the grind of newspaper reporting was depressing. I had no life. All I

did was work. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she heard people saying,

He died doing what he loved. It was then, she said, that I realized I was not doing

that. She eventually decided to enter the teaching field. FJ17, a married mother of two,

said that after 10 years in newsrooms, I realized that in journalism you spend a lot of

time watching what other people do and writing about it. You dont do anything yourself.

I just got tired of watching the world go by. She took a pay cut to become a teacher.

Other respondents, who worked primarily in big cities with high costs of living,

said low journalism salaries drove them out of newsrooms. They believed the pay they

received did not match the amount of work they were doing, leaving them unable to

afford the kind of life they wanted. FJ12, the primary breadwinner in a family of five,

called journalism the last legalized form of slavery because of its high demands and

low pay. A former magazine writer and editor, she currently works in marketing and

public relations. While she prefers journalism, she reports her salary is much higher now.

FJ13 said she found newspaper salaries insulting. She receives higher pay in the

advertising field. The guy emptying my garbage can was making the same amount I

was, she said. I went to school, and I was educating a whole population of people, and I

was making as much as my garbage man. FJ6 changed her career from journalism to

advertising because of the salary difference. People can barely make a living in

journalism, said the resident of New York City. As an advertising copywriter I am

making at least 30 percent more than I made as a journalist, doing basically the same

thing.

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 Some respondents said the fact that male co-workers often earned higher salaries

contributed to their disillusionment with journalism as a career. I consistently got paid

less than my male colleagues, said FJ8, now a journalism professor. At one job, she

discovered that a male colleague in the same position earned $10,000 a year more than

she. FJ5, a former radio reporter and now a lawyer, said she was so disappointed by the

treatment of women in journalism and the pay. She said discrepancies will not change

until women own and operate media companies. FJ9, a single parent and former

newspaper reporter, said her employers didnt pay you enough to live well in southern

California. You couldnt afford to buy a house or have a child. She said she saw many

women leave the business because just like men, we didnt want to stay here and eat dirt

for the rest of our lives.

FJ9 also noted that financial concerns are the main reason women with children

leave newspapers. The clich about women leaving the business because of children is

not an accurate clich. That is one of the factors, but its because kids cost money,

journalism jobs pay you crap, and for the same economic reasons as men, we want to

make more money and work fewer hours. FJ4 said she became discouraged when she

realized young male journalists had advantages over female journalists. A lot of the

young female reporters were low-balled. Young male reporters were consistently offered

better jobs and pay than young women. Maybe because the bosses saw them as an

investment they knew a lot of women would leave.

Several respondents recounted incidents of discrimination and sexism from both

male and female managers. FJ1 said managers pushed her to use her looks and her race

rather than her talent and intelligence to get ahead. Many of my friends in journalism

12
have achieved success because the first doors that opened for them were purely based on

connections and not merit. FJ6, who worked in the male-dominated realm of business

reporting, said she perceived most attitudes about the job to be competitive, which

seems to me very male. She also said men tended to be dismissive of women in the

industry. I used to deal with these white guys in chinos and they used to talk really

slowly to me. FJ8 pointed out that the content of newspapers reflects the typical

newspaper reporter and editor white, middle-aged, middle-class men. It skews the

worldview. Go to children and family coverage. They dont understand issues; they only

react as opposed to examining poverty, drug addiction and all the things that lead to

abuse. Its not all neat and tied up; its messy and complicated. The public is not getting

an accurate reflection of whats going on.

Some respondents said an emphasis on male news values in coverage kept them

from reporting news they believed was important. FJ14 said she became discouraged

because she wanted to change the world through her reporting and realized that would not

happen. As an Asian American, she had wanted to explain the Vietnamese community in

depth to newspaper readers, but quickly learned, I was never going to write the kinds of

stories I wanted. They werent interested in in-depth psychological stories; they were

interested in quick-hit gang stories. FJ16 said the most difficult aspect of reporting was

that you view the world in black and white terms. There is always someone to blame. I

was always being asked to find fault. FJ8 noted that women generally see more detail

and complexity in stories than men. There is less nuance in the news, and women are

very good at nuance and gray areas. I think it becomes more cut and dry with men,

13
particularly white, middle-class suburban men. FJ3 said bluntly: The news is very

penis-driven. Men love to talk about themselves and other men.

Mentoring, or the lack thereof, was a problem for several of the respondents. FJ17

noted that at her newspaper, I saw young, hungry women and nobody was there to help

them. I felt I had to prove myself all over again. As a young woman, that could push you

out. I think it might be easier for young men. FJ9 said women who worked at the higher

levels at her newspaper did not reach out to help their counterparts in lower positions.

She attributed this to behavior learned on elementary school playgrounds, where more

popular girls shunned less popular ones. Alpha females have not helped lesser-ranking

females. They oppress them. FJ15 said, Women are really abysmal mentors of other

women. I dont know what is going on there. Women need to take a role in mentoring

other women.

Discussion

Many of the women interviewed for this study perceived themselves as members

of a secondary class in their newsrooms. The reasons were many: lack of opportunity,

low salary, unwillingness by management to offer flexible work schedules. But in the

view of the women interviewed for this study, they all added up to much the same thing:

Many women in newsrooms are considered inferior to their male co-workers. Another

detrimental factor was the tendency of many male managers to bond with young male

colleagues and help them move up in the business, while young female employees did

not receive the same encouragement. Several of the women interviewed said female

managers also failed to encourage them, which they found disheartening because they

14
had hoped other women would act as mentors and help them deal with male-dominated

newsrooms.

Many respondents reported that their jobs did not live up to expectations. They

studied journalism because they enjoyed writing, talking to people and researching

information. But eventually, the demands of newsroom jobs became grinds they no

longer wanted, particularly considering the low pay. Several of the women said the work

was no longer meaningful, in part because their definitions of news differed from those of

male managers, similar to Van Zoonens concept of a gendered nature of news. For

example, FJ8 noted that news tends to reflect the interests of white, middle-aged, middle-

class men. Other women reported that editors and managers did not support the types of

stories they wanted to write because they saw news from a male perspective. Several

reported that editors wanted them to write reactive stories rather than looking in-depth

into issues they felt were important. They also felt that male editors did not allow them to

report news from a womens perspective that might allow different approaches than

traditional news values dictate. Paula Skidmore has noted a structured inequality in the

news process in which women journalists are made to feel that their concernsare not

what is required of a true news professional.36

Many of the respondents in our study left journalism for fields that employ

writing, interviewing and other skills they developed as journalists. These included

advertising, public relations, law, teaching secondary school and teaching college.

Respondents said these fields allowed them to work more regular hours than newsroom

jobs. It is worth noting that two of the professions, public relations and secondary school

15
teaching, are dominated by women, while three others, advertising, law and college

teaching, are male-dominated like journalism.

Conclusion and recommendations

This study sought to uncover some of the reasons why women who graduated

with degrees in journalism eventually left full-time journalism jobs. This study provides a

window into the experiences and observations of 17 women who excelled in journalism

school but found the real world of journalism discouraging and unable or unwilling to

accommodate their needs. The women interviewed in this study left their jobs for various

reasons but certain themes resonated, including failure of the organization to provide

schedule flexibility, a focus on male news values, low pay, and lack of mentoring or

support from managers. The women in this study perceived that they were part of a

subordinate class at the male-dominated news organizations where they worked. Their

perceptions, views, or standpoint were not recognized as significant or important to the

organization. The patriarchal aspects of newsrooms did little to encourage them or

accommodate their needs, wants or desires. This was particularly discouraging for young

journalists who entered the profession with high expectations. Women who in college had

decided to go into journalism to change the world found they could not change the male-

oriented culture of most newsrooms.

Certainly some male journalists encounter these problems, but young men are not

leaving the business in the same numbers as young women. Some married women might

have more flexibility than unmarried women to leave jobs, especially if their husbands

have well-paying jobs. The unmarried women in this study expressed particular

exasperation at the lack of respect, encouragement and compensation they received on

16
the job. They left newsrooms for positions that offered better pay, more flexible schedules

and greater respect.

The results here could be interpreted as a warning to news organizations as they

facing shrinking profits and decreasing readership. If newspapers want to appeal to a

broader audience and stay healthy financially, they must change their business strategies.

One way to do this is to appeal to more female readers. Female journalists might have a

better understanding of what it takes to reach these readers. For this reason alone,

newspapers need to do a better job of persuading women to stay in newsrooms.

The problems cited by the women interviewed here: lack of flexibility, low pay,

failure to provide mentoring and an emphasis on male news interests, can be addressed

by news organizations. In the twenty-first century, companies can provide arrangements

like job sharing, part-time work, telecommuting and on-site day care to accommodate

families. They can provide equitable pay and mentoring programs. They can allow

women freedom to write about topics they think are interesting and important. These

changes will not be easy. They will require newsroom managers to rethink many of their

fundamental approaches. But these changes are necessary if newspaper companies want

to retain women in newsrooms, according to the results of our interviews.

In addition, it is essential that journalism educators become aware of the problems

female graduates face in newsrooms so they can help prepare their students. News

organizations are failing to meet many expectations of female journalism graduates, so

educators must inform them of the realities. With knowledge, female students can arm

themselves to face potential obstacles and male students can better understand female

colleagues needs. In our own classrooms, we intend to employ new curriculum elements,

17
including information on sex discrimination and the masculine natures of many

newsrooms. We also plan to introduce strategies on salary and promotion negotiation,

suggest young women seek out mentors, inform about balancing family and work

responsibilities and employ other elements we learned from this study. We hope other

journalism educators will do the same.

This study has limitations. First, 17 subjects is a relatively small study sample.

Indeed, it is possible the 17 women in this study are simply a group of disgruntled

journalists who didnt like their jobs. Second, the pool of respondents could have been

more diverse. The interview subjects were primarily Caucasian. Four were Asian, and one

was black. None was Hispanic or Native American. In the future, researchers could cast a

wider net and obtain a larger sample by employing a survey method. Third, this study

looked only at women who had quit full-time jobs in newsrooms, not at women who

stayed in newsrooms; the latter group might have provided differing perspectives.

However, a study that did just that came to strikingly similar conclusions.37 Walsh-

Childers, Chance and Herzog surveyed 277 female reporters, editors and graphic artists at

120 small, medium and large newspapers. One in four of the women journalists said

discrimination was a significant or very serious problem. The toll was staggering. Taken

together, the costs of list or burned-out employees, wasted talent, lost readers, and, in

some cases, the legal fees and other costs associated with sex discrimination lawsuits

must be formidable, they concluded. As newsroom budgets tighten, it seems

increasingly obvious that sex discrimination is a cost newspapers can no longer afford.38

Although the Walsh-Childers et al. study was published a decade ago, in 1996, the results

18
of our study suggest that many newsroom managers have yet to grasp the impact of sex

discrimination.

Notes

19
1
Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad, Amy Jo Coffey and Maria Tucker, Enrollment Growth Rate Slows; Fields Focus on
Undergraduate Education at Odds with University Setting, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator 60, no. 3
(autumn 2005): 286-314.
2
ASNE annual survey, 2005, http://www.asne.org (16 April 2005).
3
David Weaver, Randal Beam, Bonnie Brownlee, Paul S. Voakes, G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist Survey,
2003, <www.poynter.org> (18 July 2005).
4
Weaver, Bean, Brownlee, Voakes and Wilhoit, The American Journalist Survey.
5
Weaver, Bean, Brownlee, Voakes and Wilhoit, The American Journalist Survey.
6
Lee B Becker, Tudor Vlad, Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, and Amy Jo Coffey, 2003-2004 Enrollment Report: Growth in Field
Keeps Up with Trend, Journalism & Mass Communication Editor 59, no. 3 (autumn 2004): 289.
7
Becker, Vlad, Hennick-Kaminski and Coffey, 2003-2004 Enrollment Report, 289.
8
Public Relations Society of America, press release on diversity survey, www.prsa.org (3 May 2005).
9
Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad, Jisu Huh and Nancy A. Mace, Gender equity elusive, surveys show, FreedomForum.org, 15
December 2003, <www..freedomforum.org> (2 May 2005).
10
Kim Walsh-Childers, Jean Chance and Kristin Herzog, Women journalists report discrimination in newsrooms,
Newspaper Research Journal 17, nos. 3-4 (1996): 86-8
11
U.S. Census Bureau, Median Earnings in the Past 12 Months (In 2004 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) of Workers by Sex and
Womens Earnings as a Percentage of Mens Earnings by Selected Characteristics,
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=D&-qr_name=ACS_2004_EST_G00_S2002&-
ds_name=D&-_lang=en (1 March 2006).
12
U.S. Census Bureau, Median Earnings in the Past 12 Months.
13
Mary Arnold Hemlinger and Cynthia C. Linton, Women in Newspapers 2002: Still Fighting an Uphill Battle, Media
Management Center at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.: Media Management Center, 2002), 27.
14
Helen McEwen, Pia Orrenius and Mark Wynne, Opting Out of Work: Whats Behind the Decline in Labor Force
Participation, Southwest Economy 6, November/December 2005.
15
McEwen, Orrenius and Wynne, Opting Out of Work.
16
ASNE annual survey, 2005.
17
Mary Arnold and Marlene Lozada Hendrickson, Women In Newspapers 2003: Challenging the Status Quo, Media
Management Center at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.: Media Management Center, 2003), 13.
18
Bob Papper, Running in Place: Minorities and Women in television see little change, while minorities fare worse in
radio, Radio-Television News Directors Association, Communicator (July/August 2005): 28.
19
Joe Strupp, More Women Become Newspaper Publishers, Editor & Publisher, 7 November 2003,
<http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2030399> (1 March 2006).
20
Strupp, More Women Become Newspaper Publishers.
21
Catalyst, Women Take Care, Men Take Charge: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed www.Catalyst.org.
(1 March 2006).
22
Cheryl Hall, Glass ceiling? More like steel, The Dallas Morning News, 19 February 2006, p. 1D.
23
Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women & Business in the United States. (New York:
Palgrave, 1998, 2002), 203-205.
24
Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women, 203-205.
25
Paul Farhi, Under Siege, American Journalism Review 28, no. 1 (February/March 2006): 26-31.
26
Josephine Donovan, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism (New York: Continuum, 1992),
187-190.
27
Linda Steiner, Newsroom Accounts of Power at Work, in Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart Allen, eds. News,
Gender and Power (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 146-159.
28
Lisbet Van Zoonen, One of the Girls? The Changing Gender of Journalism, in Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart
Allen, eds. News, Gender and Power (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 36.
29
Van Zoonen, One of the Girls? 36.
30
Steiner, Newsroom Accounts of Power at Work, 158; Van Zoonen, One of the Girls? 36-37.
31
Paula Skidmore, Gender and the Agenda, in Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart Allen, eds. News, Gender and
Power (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 207-209.
32
Thomas R. Lindlof, Qualitative Communication Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995),
163-196.
33
Lindlof, Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 164.
34
Lindlof, Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 127-128.
35
Lindlof, Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 197-243.
36
Skidmore, Gender and the Agenda, 205, 209.
37
Walsh-Childers, Chance and Herzog, Women Journalists Report Discrimination in Newsrooms, 68-87.
38
Walsh-Childers, Chance and Herzog, Women Journalists Report Discrimination in Newsrooms, 86.