Posts tagged women

The She Works: Note to Self Tumblr is an NPR creation that’s part of The Changing Lives of Women series. Advice that’s helped you at work, to women, from women.

You can create your own note card and print it out, if you like. Pictured above is a quote a lovely working lady once shared with me. Wise words, especially for entrepreneurial women. Lady journos, get on this. —Jihii 

Calling all SF Lady Journos: Meet Lady Media Innovators

Her Girl Friday, a Brooklyn based group dedicated to empowering and fostering community among women in journalism and nonfiction storytelling, is hosting a free event in SF on March 7. We like their mission and their work and have posted about it before. 

The gap of women in media is big and according to today’s Al Jazeera op-ed, it’s critical to the planet. Some facts from the piece:

• Between January and November 2012, in a study of 37 newspapers from the New York Times to the Traverse City Record Eagle in Michigan, women were quoted in 20 percent of all stories about the election.
• According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2012 Newsroom Census, 34 percent of employees in supervising positions in newsrooms were women, the same percentage as in 1999.
• In TV news, 39.8 percent of the workforce at all stations is women, compared to 32.7 percent of those working at all radio stations. 
• On a list leaked last week of 44 journalists who sit on the Pulitzer Prize nominating committee, 28 are men and 16 are women. 

So, in an era of continued disparity combined with digital disruption and incredible amounts of innovation, HGF’s event features four inspiring woman innovators and the incredible work they’ve been doing. Details here.

How to Cover Rape Responsibly

In light of the recent coverage of rapes in India, Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia J-School, recently wrote a blog post for Women Under Siege on covering rape responsibly. Start with some background from Poynter on why journalists are covering rape differently in the US and India.

Professor Benedict sheds fascinating light on the issue:

In short, when we cover rape in the Sudan, Rwanda, the Balkans, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and now in India, we look at why the men do it. We write about the beliefs of child soldiers that raping a virgin will protect them from AIDS, or about the way men are trained to see women as booty in war. We discuss rape as a tool of ethnic cleansing and genocide. And lately, concerning India, we’ve been running stories about the traditionally subservient role of women, how the economy is liberating them, and the subsequent violent reaction of men.  

But as soon as we look at rape among our own, whether civilian or military, this perspective is entirely neglected. Instead, we ask questions about the victim: what she was doing, her past, how she was behaving, her relationship to the assailant, whether she’d been drinking, etc., etc. And we cover rape as a psychological aberration, never asking how and where men learn to rape, never seeing it as symptomatic of something in our culture. Thus we entirely neglect to look at why this crime continues to rise as other crimes drop, why one in six women is raped in her lifetime, why one in three women is sexually assaulted in the military, and why no woman in America walks free of the fear of sexual predation and violence.

Keep reading for the hopeful part, and the questions she would like to see answered instead.

Image: via Women Under Siege, word cloud generated from headlines calling what happened in the Air Force; Steubenville, Ohio; and at the Horace Mann School and Penn State University “sex scandals.”

Gendered News

From entertainment to finance to politics to sports, the Guardian Datablog explores how women and men are published in leading UK news sources, and how often articles by gender are shared across social networks.

In the interactive they’ve produced, you can sort across different criteria as well as drill deeper into specific publications and their sections.

At a macro level, UK news publishing is much like what we see in the United States: it’s dominated by men with less than 30% of news articles published by women across the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Guardian.

Drill down a bit, or look at gender participation by subject area, and you see women dominating topics like “lifestyle” and “entertainment” and men dominating, well, most everything else.

But the Datablog isn’t just looking at who gets published, but who gets heard.

You would think it’s one and the same but with the decline of the newspaper front page — and the Web site home page — as a conversation driver, it’s the social ecosystem of readers and their sharing habits that drives audience engagement and interaction.

Via the Guardian:

Online, who gets heard is determined by an ecosystem of actors: individuals sharing on Facebook and Twitter, link-sharing communities, personal algorithms on Google News, and citizen media curators. Newspapers only offer part of the information supply; we readers decide who’s heard every time we click, share or use our own voice…

…Of course, the reach of an article is much more complicated than likes and shares. What gets seen is often dependent on the time of day and the influence of who shares a link.

The definition of likes and shares also changes. Since our measurements in early August, Facebook’s counters have been changed to track links sent within private messages. This year, newsrooms experimented with Facebook social readers and tablet apps to grow their audiences. Bernhard Rieder’s network diagram of the Guardian’s Facebook page illustrates yet another social channel for news. Publishers sometimes can’t agree on what their own data means.

Despite these limitations, data on likes and shares offer the best outside picture of audience interest in women’s writing in the news.

Read through for analysis and more about the methodology and tools used to suss out the data. As usual, the Guardian also lets you download the data so you can work with it yourself.

Image: Screenshot, UK News Gender Ranking: What They Publish vs What Readers Share, via The Guardian. Select to embiggen.

Top Ten Sites for Millennial Women

Forbes just released its 3rd annual Top 100 Websites for Women but there’s a special this year, the top ten sites for millennial women.

When compiling the 2012 list of ForbesWoman’s Best Websites for Women, we took particular care in addressing the needs of our younger readers. I know from experience that we Millennials are a curious bunch. We’re the Girl Power generation, so we’re looking for career content that speaks to us directly, not afterthoughts in the mostly male world of cigars, golf outings and firm back-slaps. Trends show that we’re ambitious: two-thirds (66%) of young women ages 18 to 34 rate career high on their list of life priorities (compared to 59% of men). But we’re also entrepreneurial-minded: a recent study revealed that over half of us plan to start a business in the next five years. But above all we’re creative, web-savvy and largely free-wheeling. More than 75% of us our single, living in urban and suburban locales and looking to play just as hard as we work.

FJP: We love well curated lists and this is a short but nice selection. These are by and for kick-ass young women - geeks, fashionistas, girlfriends, entrepreneurs, creatives, who are ambitious, innovative, job-seeking, company-starting, and writing about it all.

(Bonus: see our recent post on women who tweet that you should listen to)

The winners are:

Chic CEO
A slick site for women with the entrepreneur bug. Advice covers everything from patents and copyrights to the pros and cons of buying a franchise, but a particular emphasis on downloadable tools (think business plan outlines and contracts) makes this a must-visit.

The Daily Muse
A career advice hub for the Gen-Y careerist, the newly relaunched site features accessible (and entertaining) advice for recent grads and working gals and a bang-up portal for job hunting.

ED2012
What began as a project for aspiring young writers who hoped to attain editor status “by 2010” is still going strong two years past deadline. The hybrid networking hub, educational resource and font of media industry advice is a must-see for those aspiring to join the death rattle of the publishing biz.

The Everygirl
An everything-you-need-know site, The Everygirl inspires career-driven, creative young women to create the stylish, successful lives they’ve always dreamed of through finance, fashion and travel tips.

Generation Meh
By ForbesWoman contributor J. Maureen Henderson, Generation Meh focuses on “providing practical personal development tips, tricks, and guidance for twenty and thirtysomethings who shun (or would like to shun) the 9-5 corporate grind.”

Hello Giggles
Cofounded by three Los Angeleans including “New Girl” Zooey Deschanel, this site was first envisioned as a comedy site for women—think Funny Or Die without the fart jokes. Instead it’s grown into an exchange where women of all ages share their writing on life, love and all things adorable.

Intern Sushi
A portal for connecting college students and young professionals with internships in creative professions. Slick, smart and well-designed, Intern Sushi encourages users to ditch the resume for creative video introductions.

Lindsey Pollack
LinkedIn spokesperson and Gen Y expert Lindsey Pollak blogs about social media and work for the next generation of leaders.

Small Hands Big Ideas
Grace Boyle has written from the minority perspective of a 20-something women who works for a tech startup since 2008, and chronicles her travels, relationships, career hiccups and “big ideas” on a daily basis.

WORKS by Nicole Williams
Author Nicole Williams curates WORKS, a resource for young professional women with a sophisticated voice.

Image: From Forbes. Click through the photo to read the article.

When These Women Tweet, You Should Listen

Via Foreign Policy:

When Foreign Policy published its 2012 Twitterati 100 list, we could not help but be struck by the lack of women. Of the 100 tweeters Foreign Policy said “you need to follow,” nearly 90 percent are men. Given the strong presence of smart, powerful, influential women on Twitter, we found this a bit hard to take. So, beginning near midnight U.S. East Coast time on Monday, a group of women from around the world created a list of interesting and influential activists, journalists, analysts, economists, geeks and wonks. Within a few hours, we had more than 200 names and our list had begun to make the rounds on Twitter.

How is this list different than FP’s original list? It includes many prominent, influential women who know and tweet about foreign policy and international affairs but were overlooked by FP. It includes women who tweet in languages other than English, or tweet multilingually, and women who work and lecture in areas rarely covered by FP — such as international development.

Most importantly, this is a list generated by a global network of inspired and knowledgeable women worldwide who contributed possibly lesser-known but fresh and important voices. The #FPwomeratti list includes the invigorating diversity of local voices with insider information and breaking news who are not to be missed.

The women on this new list are by and large listed by region, although there are categories for overall wonks and geeks. Click through to learn more about them and follow.

Foreign Policy’s original Twitterati list is here.

Image: Collage of some very important and very good to listen to women, by the FJP.

The Gender Gap in Election 2012 Media Sourcing

A new infographic by the 4th Estate illustrates how significantly underrepresented women are in 2012 election coverage. 

via 4thestate:

In our analysis of news stories and transcripts from the past 6 months, men are much more likely to be quoted on their subjective insight in newspapers and on television. This pattern holds true across all major news outlets, as well as on issues specifically concerning women. For example, in front page articles about the 2012 election that mention abortion or birth control, men are 4 to 7 times more likely to be cited than women. This gender gap undermines the media’s credibility.

How they did it:

The 4th Estate collects data from a sampling of news stories from US national print outlets, TV broadcast and radio transcripts covering the 2012 election. These stories are contextually analyzed and broken down by topic, sentiment and newsmaker. The data for this graphic includes quotes and statements from newsmakers who provide subjective insight. Statements from candidates are not counted. The 4th Estate’s sister company, Global News Intelligence, provides similar proprietary services for government and Fortune 500 companies.

Mapping Paid Maternity Leave

Via Think Progress:

Out of 178 nations, the U.S. is one of three that does not offer paid maternity leave benefits, let alone paid leave for fathers, which more than 50 of these nations offer. Here’s how the U.S. stacks up to 14 other countries:

In comparison, Canada and Norway offer generous benefits that can be shared between the father and mother, France offers about four months, and even Mexico and Pakistan are among the nations offer 12 weeks paid leave for mothers.

American women are offered 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which exempts companies with fewer than 50 paid employees, but in 2011, only 11 percent of private sector workers and 17 percent of public workers reported that they had access to paid maternity leave through their employer. And for first-time mothers, only about half can take paid leave when they give birth.

FJP: Puts things in perspective, don’t it?

Update: On Twitter, Sara Morrisson believes the graphic and ThinkProgress quote is misleading, as some US companies do offer paid maternity leave. She has a point. I should have included that what’s being referenced here is mandated paid maternity leave. As Working Mother recently reported, “A Families and Work Institute report found only 16 percent of the companies it surveyed offered fully paid maternity leave in 2008, down from 27 percent in 1998.” — Michael

Image: Mapping Paid Maternity Leave, via ThinkProgress.