I love men. From the time I was a little girl – in a co-educational Catholic school in New York – I learned the boys were the ones who presented me with the REAL competition on the soccer pitch, in the football card trading stakes, in political and current affairs discussions and later, in the workplace. I have always worked in male-dominated fields (Wall Street and business journalism) and enjoyed good support from (most of) my overwhelmingly male bosses.
Dating – and moving up the business ladder - was a different story altogether. Many American men don’t want a girl with a brain (no matter how tiny) and ambition. Some Irish guys still physically shrink away from me when I’m friendly, assuming I’m making a pass at them. (I’m not. I’m married to a great guy.) Others finds the bolshie Yank an amusing distraction. To some men, a woman with strong opinions and the willingness to voice them is, well, incredibly distasteful.
They believe in the “Women know your limits” school of thought parodied here by the brilliant Harry Enfield on the BBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w
A UK Independent article this week, pointed out by RTE broadcaster Miriam O’Callaghan on Twitter @MiriamOCal, also decries the “noise” created by women on television. It claims the new “boss-class” of women makes men feel bad. The author, Amol Rajan, claims many women on tv are bossy, bullying, preachy and patronising. Read it here and weep:
Too much interference on our televisions
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/too-much-interference-on-our-televisions-2012099.html
There’s also a myth, taken as fact, in Irish broadcasting that women’s voices are grating/ irritating to the listener. I have not been able to find any research that backs this up. The research I did find says women’s voices are more musical and complex. So, why is Irish journalism such a male-dominated profession?
Una Mullally wrote an interesting piece on the gender imbalance in radio in the Sunday Tribune in May 2010 and found that ” Eighty percent of RTé Radio One’s regular programmes are male-led and 80% of 2fm’s programmes are male-led. Newstalk has 10 weekday programmes, none of which are presented solely by women, although Claire Byrne co-presents Breakfast. The weekend schedule is a little more female friendly, with three of the 11 programmes presented by women. Overall, 84% of content is presented by men. On its weekday shows, Today FM has just one daily female presenter, Alison Curtis. The station has 16 weekend shows and just three are presented by women. Overall, 90% of its programmes are presented by men. Over on 4FM, just one of that station’s 25 programmes is presented by a woman.” Article here: http://www.tribune.ie/magazine/article/2010/may/02/final-edition-radio-gaga-where-are-all-the-women-o/)
In the print media, the draining away of women from the business and (some) news desks is shocking. It wasn’t always this way. The Irish Times and Sunday Times business desks were fairly equal gender-wise when I worked on the desks (1996-2006). At the moment, the Sunday Business Post seems to buck the trend with a higher ratio of female to male by-lines in the paper.
Why has this happened? Are women less skilled as “hard news” journalists or do they opt out of journalism to have children? Or, as Carrie Bradshaw might say… “Could the real reason women’s voices are not more widely heard in the media be because women should not have opinions?”
What do you think? @margareteward
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Love this post Margaret! I also think [looking back] even when I was doing my journalism potgrad in the mid 90s, the men on my course were very cock-sure about their career prospects and their general sense of self. They expected to do well and talked at ease about the newspaper jobs they’d go on to get. High expectations and obscene surety/self belief works. The women, on the otherhand, were dreadfully self-deprecating and wary. There’s a stark confidence problem that ends up as gender imbalance in business and journalism if you don’t manage to iron it out of yourself early on. Irish mummies back in the day were great too for telling their sons how wonderful they were and telling their daughters how important it was to nab someone else’s wonderful son and make do. It carries on, into marriages, the workplace, etc etc. The important thing is to never feel like shutting up about it.
I’m in total agreement, despite our ability to produce a more mellifluous resonance over the airways women are conspicuously absent from radio, unless of course somebody is required to read the news or weather.
Why we continue to tolerate the midatlantic drawl and effortful fake laughs of countless presenters beggars belief.
While ‘certain’ women will always be called upon for opinion (fashion/babies/SATC-yawn) its overwhelmingly men who dominate the opinions on everything from cars to economics and social issues. I relish the next Myers interview when he will no doubt inform me about my driving, my spending, my inability to grasp theoretical concepts, because as we all know, women are all the same.Of course that interview will be conducted by another man…..
On the other hand, women tend to dominate the arts, particularly in print. Also (purely anecdotally), I’ve known of a number of instances over the years where women contributors were actively sought for arts and business radio segments, purely to give a balance of different-sounding voices.
Also, stations like RTE are not known for taking risks, so for any new voice (male or female) to break through is a minor miracle.
It would be interesting to know how many women work behind the scenes in radio (as researchers, etc) – I have a feeling things would be more balanced here.
Jane, I agree – a successful career has a lot to do with having self-confidence.
My mother’s news-reading was curtailed on Radio Éireann in the late 1950s/1960s because men’s voices were thought to be more ‘authoritative’. For many years subsequently there were no female news readers. A number of years back Doireann Ní Bhriain did an excellent series on women in Irish radio, going back into the period when the public service ‘marriage ban’ compulsorily retired many women at the beginning of their careers.
Latterly there have been women reaching very senior positions in RTE Radio but this does not seem to have resulted in greater opportunites for women on air.
Blah Blah Blah,, Margaret try having a little consideration for males, The teenage male suffering from acne or any other enbarrassing problem goes into a chemist and is greeted by all females, He moves onto the supermarket again the tills are all manned by females, The majority of nurses and school teachers are women. Mary Robinson was President but she ditched the job early to take up another position elsewhere (unreliable) we didn’t condemn all women for her greedy selfist act we elected another woman. The sooner you women stop trying to be man the better, I always wanted to be a nun but i didn’t have the fat ankles so tough luck..