Journalism and Gender: Toward a Multidimensional Approach

The belief that journalism is somehow beyond gender power relations stems from a tendency to consider gender differences in terms of a female-male dichotomy, and accordingly, a belief that sexism in media will disappear by changing the gender of agency. In this article, we wish to openly criticise journalism (one of the key institutions of social life; see Acker 1992) as a gendered institution. Here, the term “gendered” means that gender is present in the processes, practices, images and ideologies of journalism – and its power distributions. We regard the relationship between the institution of journalism, culture and gender as a methodologically complex phenomenon.

We first argue that journalism and its relationship to gender can be investigated systematically as a multidimensional object; depending on the specific research focus, varying aspects may be highlighted. Second, we seek to go further by suggesting that the gendered institution of journalism can be seen either as an externally or internally constructed object. Instead of keeping gender and journalism on separate islands, and only brought together externally, we suggest that it is important to highlight the historical and institutional intertwining of journalism and gender.

Based on our own studies, we aim to develop a model that allows journalism to be studied from several perspectives – without losing sight of the fact that these viewpoints cannot be considered in isolation. Entitled Subscribing a Woman Editor-in-Chief? Female and Male Editors’ Views on the Impact of Gender on Career (Torkkola & Ruoho 2009), our original project was carried out at the request of the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, named after Finland’s largest newspaper. The foundation sought to clarify why so few women held top executive positions in the journalism sector. Quite early in the study, we realised that it would be extremely difficult to cite a single reason why women had not progressed to top leadership positions in their careers in the same way that men had. Instead, it would be necessary to emphasise many different reasons and how they interact.

The interviewees represented the highest management levels in 11 daily newspapers, six magazines and four television news and current affairs departments.

We start by considering the limitations and possibilities of the two concepts of journalism and gender. We review the research conducted from different perspectives on both concepts, examining it in the context of our own methodological standpoint. After investigating the complex links between the two notions in the context of our original study, we continue to reflect on the different theories of journalism (or “journalisms”) as constructed by our previous study’s research question. Finally, we return to the discussion on the mutual links between journalism and gender, links that can be observed as working both externally and internally.

As a point of departure, we build our theoretical discussion based on the fact that previous studies on journalism have overlooked journalism as a gendered institution – even studies about journalism practices and cultures (see Chambers, Steiner & Fleming 2004; Fröhlich & Lafky 2008; North 2009; Byerly 2011; Hanitzsch & Hanusch 2012). With this point, we do not mean to deny the importance of the studies to which we are indebted (Zoonen 1998a and 1998b; de Bruin & Ross 2004; Djerf-Pierre & Löfgren-Nilsson 2004; Holland 2004; Ross 2004; Melin 2008; Djerf-Pierre 2011; Jenkins & Finneman 2017), rather our desire is to continue the discussion.

For more extensive systematic and comparative analyses of the relationship between journalism and gender, it is important to focus on the socio-historical role of journalism as a gendered institution. The institutional role of journalism has been a mainstay of journalism culture (Hanitzsch 2007; see also Örnebring 2013), and this institutional role has many links to gender. In general, journalism relies on the binary two-gender system upon which the majority of modern societies have built their cultures. From this perspective, we suggest that journalism as an institution is not as gender-neutral as supposed; on the contrary, this viewpoint leads to questions concerning the institutional history of journalism and its role in the formation of gendered citizenship. The study of women’s magazines represents trail-blazing work in this sense because it has highlighted divisions within journalism and politics (Ferguson 1991; Winship 1987; Ballaster et al. 1991; Gough-Yates 2003; Töyry 2005; Ytre-Arne 2011; Saarenmaa & Ruoho 2014).

Djerf-Pierre (2011) and others (e.g., Melin 2008) have pointed out that the institutional core of journalism has closely paralleled the formation of modern societies and their different philosophical-normative traditions, political public spheres, and concepts of democracy (see Christians et al. 2009). For example, in Finland, the formation of the nation-state required political publicity and citizenship building. This process led to a concept of specifically female citizenship to counter the idea of male citizenship, which, in turn, influenced women’s positioning in Finnish journalism culture (Ruoho & Torkkola 2010). This specific culture remains apparent in the way that Finnish journalists think and act, as well as in the specific kinds of journalism they value the most. As a concept, journalism culture thus can be defined “as a particular set of ideas and practices by which journalists, consciously or unconsciously, legitimate their role in society and render their work meaningful for themselves and others” (Hanitzsch 2007: 370).

However, there is no consensus regarding the strength of the bond between journalism as an institution and culture and gender. Indeed, methodological starting points and interpretations are influenced not only by how journalism is understood, but also by our understanding of gender. For example, our ways of interpreting gender have changed significantly since the 1960s. Here, we briefly survey the research on gendered journalism. We first focus on how journalism has been examined from the feminist perspective before considering how these studies have conceptualised gender.

The idea of multidimensionality owes much to earlier studies. Inspired by social identity theory, de Bruin (2004) distinguishes between the three categories of gender, and professional and organisational identities. According to de Bruin (2004), organisational identity involves an understanding that is collectively constructed and continuously renegotiated among members of an organisation. In contrast, professional identity does not stem from a particular media group but from the journalism community and its understanding of professional roles, functions, and values. Professional identity is dynamic, an evolving process through which practices connected to beliefs, values, and feelings are constructed (de Bruin 2000). Thus, increasing the number of women in top positions does not necessarily lead to the dismantling of “gendered journalism cultures”, to use Melin’s (2008) terminology.

As presented in our research, our idea of multidimensionality is based on thematic interviews with journalists (Torkkola & Ruoho 2009; Ruoho & Torkkola 2010). We aim to create a model that facilitates an analysis of differences between female and male journalists, not as a static dichotomy but as a process connected to cultures, structures, and practices. For example, in interpreting journalists’ views on their career development, we do not rely too heavily on one or two explanatory models. We take a broader approach because the interviewees’ genders do not directly explain their careers as female and male professionals. Furthermore, perceiving journalism simply as a male-dominated, patriarchal institution fails to explain why some male interviewees want to break gender expectations by refusing offers of management positions in favour of women. Because of the problems associated with interpreting professional careers from an overly narrow perspective, we developed a multidimensional model for comprehending interviews with emerging conflicts, contradictions, and inconsistencies. Table 1 presents each type of the model and provides a specific perspective on journalism as a gendered practice and field.

There are alternative ways to highlight gendered practices in journalism. These practices include organisational practices that hinder women’s career advancement, the prejudices and attitudes that women encounter, women’s reluctance to participate in organisational games, and problems in balancing family and career (Indvik & Northouse 2004). We also pay attention to the cultural and symbolic explanations of the under-representation of women in top positions. With case examples and references to sociological and media studies, we present the way in which human agency can be observed and practised in different conditions. We also show how these conditions can be interpreted together and separately when considering journalism as a gendered culture, professional practice, human agency, and institution.

In understanding journalism as a field and as a profession, the multidimensional approach led us to questions about organisational symbols (1), professional ideals (2), and gender expectations (3). A rather different story emerges from the study of media management (4), professional practices (5), and social conventions (6). Multidimensionality also induces reflection on the significance of organisational specialisation (7), daily routines (8), and individual reflectivity (9) in studying journalism agency. As Table 1 shows, each of these complementary types opens a certain intersectional perspective regarding the fundamental question of how to understand the gender of journalism.

Although the narratives of the interviewed editorial chiefs in our study reflect real-life experiences, they should not be understood as descriptions of everyday life in editorial offices that accurately correspond with reality. For example, the impression that gender is insignificant in journalism does not necessarily represent the reality of the interviewee. Rather, the interviewee is more likely describing the cultural understanding of the gender of journalism in the context of individual media organisations, editorial offices, and within Finnish society. When discussing journalism, the interviewees talk about both their individual definition of it and the shared meanings in journalism cultures. In media houses and editorial offices, an individual’s opportunity to perform journalism is constructed by the interactions between structures and persistent cultural values. Gender easily becomes a mere classification or label describing the interviewees’ attitudes and behaviours. Consequently, the interviewees’ stories cannot be reduced to mere female and male narratives. Even so, these stories provide an understanding of how journalism practices depend on the cultural expectations of women and men.

In this section, we introduce nine ways of examining the relationship between journalism and gender by considering examples from our study (Torkkola & Ruoho 2009; Ruoho & Torkkola 2010) and by citing analogous research. We emphasise that these nine ways can be distinguished only analytically; most of them both overlap and supplement each other. The diversity of journalism as a gendered institution can be understood fully only by keeping in mind that every type provides just a single perspective on journalism. Our original study dealt specifically with the gendered careers of journalists, so the following examples highlight the multidimensionality of studying the careers of the interviewed Finnish journalists. By considering the dimensions through these nine types, we try to demonstrate that gender has been attached to journalism in many cultural, structural, and practical ways; meanwhile, the larger society and culture is based on the idea of a two-sex/gender system.

1. Symbols. The term “media organisation” refers to the symbolic and concrete cultures, structures, and practices from which the organisation and its potentially gendered nature are constructed. Media organisations are not stable structures but should be viewed as evolving processes in which practices are connected to beliefs, values, and feelings (de Bruin 2000). Similar to the metaphors of the media organisation that make this subculture visible, these symbols indicate the mostly invisible and unconscious ways of understanding organisations (Morgan 1986; Mangham 1996).

Understanding a media organisation for example, through the house metaphor, constructs it as a specific space. The culture of a single media house establishes symbolic walls, entrances, and windows that allow certain elements while making others difficult to implement (Ruoho & Torkkola 2010). Such spatialisation of organisations becomes concretised as a place with rooms and corners, a space where one is inside or outside the centre or further out in the margins. This spatial binarity is also connected with the assumption of a gender dichotomy that positions women and men as basic divisions sharing similar experiences and natures (Leonard 2002). In our study, interviewees described the media houses using military, family, and team sports metaphors. The military and sports metaphors connect leadership and management to traditional masculinity.

2. Ideals. Understanding the social and cultural roles of journalism involves comprehending beliefs about its goals and means. Deuze (2005) sums up journalists’ prevailing professional ideology in five values. First, a journalist’s starting point for action is a public service mission; they follow news events, disseminate information, and monitor society. Second, journalists are objective, neutral, honest, and credible. Third, they are free and independent at work. Fourth, their operations pursue the news with timeliness and rapid response. Fifth, a journalist’s activities are based on ethical regulations that ensure the validity and legitimacy of their work (Deuze 2005). These professional values mirror the prevailing Western belief that journalism is an objective actor (Tuchman 1972; McQuail 1987; Zelizer 2004; Melin 2008).

In our interviews with the Finnish editorial chiefs, journalism seemed to be constructed as both an institutional relationship and a relationship with the audience. The institutional relationship emphasises the illusion of being able to follow and monitor other social actors while the audience relationship entails the ability to meet shifting demands. However, it is most interesting to consider how journalists understand their mission and scope of accreditation in society. In most of the Western world, the institutional relationship relies heavily on the view of journalism as a neutral, unbiased, and objective monitor of society. However, there are contradictions in the interviewees’ beliefs about gender-neutral ideals and journalism practices. On one hand, it seems that many top editors believe that certain areas of journalism are gender neutral, such as facts and news. On the other hand, when the meaning of gender is connected to practical situations, the idea of neutrality is diluted, and gender becomes at least one of the characteristics that defines a journalist and his or her work.

3. Expectations. Gender expectations are strongly linked to how the journalism profession is appreciated and how journalists identify themselves in their work within a specific cultural context. The female journalists stated that, above all, they want to be journalists and to write stories, a statement that can be understood as both a strategy and a need to identify with journalistic culture. This view is supported by a recent historical study on gender and journalism in Finland during the 1960s and 1970s (Kurvinen 2013). Social identity is also a central concept for de Bruin (2004), who analyses the journalism organisation as a cultural phenomenon. She approaches her interviewees’ statements as different social identities. Meanwhile, professional identities are created and experienced individually while also reflecting strong social constructions.

Of course, gender identity also involves socialisation. In most instances, both women and men are aware of social expectations: gender expectations thus become realised in hundreds of small episodes that tell us how to do gender without violating cultural norms. However, views on the impact of gender are difficult to recognise, as our research shows. The majority of both female and male interviewees perceive gender as able to affect career advancement; or at least it was in the past. Opinions are more varied regarding the current situation. For example, there are growing calls for women managers in media houses in Finland. However, this phenomenon is rooted in the Nordic policy of equality (Svensson, Pylkkänen & Niemi-Kiesiläinen 2004; Svensson 2006; Torkkola & Ruoho 2009). Although the leadership models are changing, they are still linked to traditional gender expectations.

4. Management. As Acker (1998) states, gender substructures in organisations tend to reproduce gender divisions and inequalities, even against the best intentions of some employees. Additionally, media management takes tangible form in the written and unwritten norms of decision-making, requirements, and work distribution. In our data, interviewees often described the editorial office as a family in which the male chief is the father. In this sense, our data indicates that organisational culture and management involves leadership ideals that direct recruiting operations. On the other hand, requests for female chiefs provides evidence of intensifying competition in the media market and increasing expectations of female leaders in terms of their competence in crisis management. Research has shown that female leaders are viewed to be more suitable when an organisation is in crisis (Ryan, Haslam & Postmes 2007; Haslam & Ryan 2008). Although the myth of female leadership might help to change journalism organisations and management practices in the long term, it is nevertheless based on a traditional concept of gender, one constructed on a belief in the natural and static differences between women and men (see Billing & Alvesson 2000).

5. Practices. Journalism may be regarded to be reinforcing its own gendering logic, as described by Djerf-Pierre (2007). Women have shown their capability to produce real journalism. Despite general changes, each woman is still able to individually demonstrate that she can overcome the presumed stereotypical gender restrictions and that she is simply a journalist, and not a female journalist. When journalism manifests itself as a masculine-friendly field, women in a sense should rise above their femininity to gain access to the core of journalism. In concrete terms, the gendering of journalism often appears in how topics are divided into those suitable for men and those for women. Some journalistic themes are still delegated to the female realm, such as home, family and human-interest stories. Meanwhile, matters of power, elites, structures, and news and facts are branded as male journalism. In our study, editorial offices are acutely aware of the division of topics into male and female categories. As many other studies have shown, daily professional life is based on gender differences connected to other dichotomies – private and public, soft and hard, intimate and distant, feeling and fact, subjective and objective, and serious and popular. Women journalists seem to largely share the same values as their male colleagues. However, based on research, it is justifiable to assume that a woman’s experience of journalism differs from that of their male peers (see Zilliacus-Tikkanen 1997; Steiner 1998; McKay 2000; Chambers, Steiner & Fleming 2004).

6. Conventions. The fact that women do not seek senior editorial posts has often been attributed to their greater family responsibilities. However, the situation varies in different societies and cultures. According to our research, which focuses on a Nordic country, this situation is changing because young male journalists emphasise gender equality and combine family and work demands. In Finland, fathers are eligible for paternity leave. If either a mother or a father uses parental leave, it may be considered a gendered choice (Torkkola & Ruoho 2009). Although men’s attitudes and behaviours towards the family are changing, our research suggests that gender practices in the organisational or journalism culture are not being revised. Men are not automatically encouraged to reflect critically on masculinity as a culturally produced gender discourse. Some interviewed editorial chiefs, mostly from older generations, stand by the ideal of gender neutrality, yet several are aware of the gender order dictating the practices and daily routines in the editorial office. However, gender conventions seem to be changing as our research showed generational differences in responses to questions about family life. For the 40-something generation in Finland, responsibility for the home and family is not self-evidently delegated to women. Demands for equality have influenced journalism practices, making the field more family friendly. Excelling as a journalist no longer means that work comes first (at least not automatically).

7. Specialisations. The journalism profession seems to follow the traditional understanding of journalism as rooted in its institutional status and role as the fourth estate monitoring other sectors, such as politics and the economy (Christians et al. 2009). There are no signs that serious news journalism has lost its status. Instead, it seems that polarisation is beginning to occurr within the field. One segment of the media has become more entertaining, while the other emphasises the media’s intermediary role between civil society and the state. The commercialisation and popularisation of news journalism and its increasing combination of information and entertainment have paradoxically been connected to the feminisation of journalism (Djerf-Pierre & Löfgren-Nilsson 2004). The feminisation has not necessarily been regarded as negative. Many assert that the trend will open avenues for issues that women have traditionally believed to be important. This point of view is contradictory in nature; if any area is considered to be natural for women, the assumption can also be regarded as essentialism. Based on our study, there are differences between not only genders but also generations. To those who entered the profession in the 1980s and later, the question of whether a woman can be a competent journalist is absurd. However, at least until the 1990s, career paths were gendered in the Finnish context, meaning that women and men advanced differently. For example, one interviewee recognised that she was not being perceived as suitable for career advancement; consequently, she changed jobs. It seems that some forward-moving female journalists have switched to magazine writing because of poor career prospects (Ruoho & Torkkola 2010).

8. Routines. Work routines consist of unconscious acts or behaviours, partly involving so-called tactical knowledge that helps employees cope with daily work. According to many studies, there are clear differences in women’s and men’s experiences and routines of daily editorial work (Savolainen & Zilliacus-Tikkanen 1992; Steiner 1998; Zoonen 1998a; McKay 2000; Chambers, Steiner & Fleming 2004; Zilliacus-Tikkanen 2008). For example, Zilliacus-Tikkanen (1997) noted many areas where Finnish female journalists and their male counterparts differ. Female journalists appear to prioritise so-called soft news and prefer to contextualise a factual event; they are interested in pointing out its causes and consequences. They avoid hiding behind objectivity and favour both shared projects and non-hierarchical news organisations. It also seems that female journalists use various tactics to navigate daily routines. For example, adapting to the “lad” culture often means putting up with or being indifferent to it; women do not let sexist talk or being referred to as “girls” bother them. Moving into an editorial office labelled as male might also mean hiding their femininity. Other tactics have involved recognising the male label, stopping attempts at assimilation, and leaving this work for a media or a media organisation that does not require metamorphosing into a man (e.g. Torkkola & Ruoho 2009). These tactical practices can be either conscious or unconscious and do not require special individual reflection or conscious choices.

9. Reflexivity. An individual’s own actions also constitutes an important part of research. The structures, cultures, and practices of media organisations and journalism guide practitioners to implement methods that conform to the gender order of journalism. Sometimes, individual journalists quite consciously reflect these visible and invisible guidelines of the gender order. Melin-Higgins (2004) has identified three strategies or tactics typical of female journalists, the first two of which do not challenge the existing concept of journalism. The first strategy is to build a women’s-only place in journalism. Its proponents recognise the specificity of women’s journalism but do not challenge the journalism order. In the second strategy, women act within mainstream journalism without questioning the gender hierarchy. In the third strategy, female journalists challenge the hegemonic concept of journalism. Opportunities that belong to the first (exclusively women’s) category include positions in women’s magazines, dedicated pages in newspapers and female-oriented programmes. In our study, individual female journalists seemed to adapt to the status quo of the editorial office culture in a variety of ways. They may try to act more masculine or move to more women-friendly media houses. Ross (2004: 146) calls the first strategy “tamed feminism”: women journalists attempt to achieve equal footing with their male colleagues within the existing organisation without challenging its organising principles. As we have attempted to show, cultural and structural conditions are gendered, and the gender of journalism is also actively produced through gendered individual subjects. However, there is no need to disconnect this agency from the structural conditions and cultural expectations that provide the preconditions for reflexivity (Adkins 2004).

In this article, we have argued that understanding journalism as a gendered institution requires more research. We suggest that it is worth studying journalism as a gendered field with its own history, culture, and social roles instead of keeping gender and journalism theoretically separate while thinking of journalism as a semiotic technology or institution that (among many others) reproduces representations of gender. In the most radical sense, the relationship between journalism and gender could be understood as internal, where the analysis primarily focuses on their intertwining and mutual dependency. This way of thinking also opens avenues for locating the actual changes when the power arrangement is perhaps breaking apart or being disturbed.

As discussed, gender has been re-conceptualised over time, but not in the case of core journalistic concepts. This situation makes it quite difficult to explain women’s career development from a single starting point (organisational, professional, or individual). As shown in many studies, journalism is a nebulous concept, which nonetheless has historical roots as a modern institution. This ideology is changing, but change itself does not make journalism less gendered. The phenomena with which we associate journalism appear to emphasise its general virtues, such as integrity, honesty, and transparency – even if it is in altered forms. We argue that this great confidence in journalism makes it challenging to fully observe its role as a gendered power institution. To demonstrate our standpoint, we have used our study on Finnish journalists and their career development as an example. By applying this context, we have identified nine different ways of examining the relationship between journalism and gender.

We propose that gender criticism would benefit tremendously from using the multidimensionality of journalism as a methodological standard. As described, multidimensionality has guided us, as media scholars, to highlight the gender conventions that female or male journalists adopt when they specialise in certain areas, consider their individual career options, or perform their daily duties. Additionally, this multifaceted approach has assisted us in recognising how individual journalists’ careers are not restricted but conditioned by various attributes, cultural symbols, and ways of thinking about ideal leadership and gender roles. Most importantly, this method has allowed us to observe the social nature of journalism and the need to investigate gender and journalism as historically intertwined on many levels, thus shaping a different perspective on journalism. Gender is not just a variable that is external to the field; rather, it is formed in and by journalism. With all of its professional practices, ideals, and agencies, journalism produces its own kind of gendered institution.