Abstract

Many theories have been proposed to explain why more women are not news media executives and why, as either journalists or leaders of news organizations, women have not had more impact on journalism. Using data about US news media, this chapter considers several concepts used to explain (none convincingly) why women and men should behave differently, but seemingly do not, when producing news content or running newsrooms. For several decades, when any single newsroom had only one or two women reporters, the leading theory was that when women are present only as tokens they cannot challenge prevailing practices so cannot achieve significant organizational change. Meanwhile, the assumption was that media representations have major impact, that representations reflect their makers, and that when women could, they would want to produce different kinds of content. Now that women are at least one-third of newsroom staffs, the paucity of women at the upper echelons of media industry organizations is a popular explanation for newsrooms’ resistance to new ways of doing journalism. It’s more complicated, however.