9 Depressing Facts From the Latest Women in Media Report

[KitSileya]

http://business.time.com/2014/02/19/9-depressing-facts-from-the-latest-women-in-media-report/ (Feb.19, 2014)

Women are inching towards media equality, but it’s slow going. That’s what we learned from the Women’s Media Center’s annual report on the status of women in TV, news, movies, and even social media. Some things are unsurprising, like the fact that women are vastly underrepresented in sports journalism. Other things are more interesting, like the fact that the Melissa Harris-Perry Show has more diversity than all the other Sunday political talk shows combined.

1. The highest-paid female movie star, Angelina Jolie, makes about the same per movie as the two lowest-paid male stars, Denzel Washington and Liam Neeson. Her $33 million paycheck is dwarfed by the $75 million Robert Downey Jr. rakes in as the highest-paid movie star for the Iron Man movies.
...

5. Women are faring worse at making movies in 2013 than they were in 1998. Of all the top-grossing movies of 2013, women accounted for only 16% of the writers, directors, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers.

6. Women had fewer speaking roles in movies in 2012 than in any year since 2007–only 28.4% of speaking roles in the top 100 films went to women. But on TV, 43% of speaking parts are played by women. Of the women who who did get speaking roles in movies, 34.6% were black, 33.9% were Hispanic, and 28.8% were white. And of all the speaking characters, Latina women were most likely to be depicted semi-nude.

[bettyellen]

1. Quantifiable, so we will see it dismissed at first world problems.....

by people who complain against not being able to smoke in bars and shoot their guns everywhere. Because those are most important issues than parity in anyone's workplace.

[KitSileya]

2. It's a choice whether to laugh or cry as I read your post, bettyellen

because I know how right you are. Perhaps if the article had included something about how female models earn more than male models (one of the very few professions where this is the case) they'd be interested, but since it didn't....

[bettyellen]

3. Well Kit, those women might have done something awful between films like have babies.... which is

why it is GOOD AND FAIR to underpay women and plunge the majority of babies in our country into poverty.
As long as you can smoke and have a gun, what's the problem?

[KitSileya]

5. Yes, because women have babies all on their own.

Men don't have any responsibility for babies and their mothers, do they? So who cares, even on a Democratic message board that women make up 17% of Congress, and even less of the major CEO positions, and that girls don't see anyone who looks like them speaking on screen. Heck, if they speak, it should be about a male character - to apply the Bechdel test to any movie is misandry, right? And let's not even mention the Mako Mori test - it will give these uppity wimminz ideas if they think they can demand that female characters have their own independent story arc!

[Ron Green]

4. Who writes this stupid stuff?

The article doesn't differentiate between entertainment and "media" (journalism? punditry?), but seems content to throw together some factoids and wonder why women are underrepresented in the important category of Being an Asshole on the Radio.

[bettyellen]

7. obv first world problems- who cares about working in radio- right? radio is AWESOME the way it is

anyway. It should stay male dominated. Sheesh. Next they'll want to produce TV or something.

[KitSileya]

9. Perhaps there would be less @ssholes on radio if there were more women on the radio?

Ever thought about that? From what I see of your post, I doubt it, though. Radio, tv, journalism, and film all goes under the heading media, as they are all different types of media to convey information and entertainment. A medium, in this case, is a means or agency for communicating or diffusing information, news, etc, to the public: television is a powerful medium.

[Ron Green]

11. There is television, and then there is Television.

The technology of television is a medium to bring images and sounds into homes and other locations, but Television, as a cultural force, has enabled capitalism, and the Patriarchy, to build the toxic society in which we live.
In my opinion, going on about whether women or men can and do profit more from this degrading system is an exercise in missing the more important point: how we have failed to build a world based on character and healthy relationships rather than on money.

[Zorra]

6. This is a great illustration of why posts about gender inequality are valid and necessary in GD. nt

[RBStevens]

8. K&R

[Iggo]

10. Yeah, but you forgot to discount suicides.

Oops.

Wrong right wing talking point. Sorry about that.