More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Despite women making history in the top categories at the Oscars, the number of female nominees in the 18 non-acting categories increased by only two percentage points this year, according to a Women’s Media Center analysis.
“Media frames our democratic debate, interprets and amplifies our policies and our politics. Media tells us who has power and who matters.”
Each time the United States has a new first—first woman running on a major party ticket (Hillary Clinton), six women vying for their party’s nomination (2020)—I wonder how many more countries have pulled ahead of us with a female chief executive. Seven were elected last year.
Across the globe, women’s voices are not being included in coverage of the pandemic, even though they are the most vulnerable to its impacts.
It matters who decides what is news, whose voices we hear, and whose stories get told. When women are seen, and highlighted in a manner that accurately reflects their role in society, it changes public perceptions. To date, the people at the top of the news media have not reflected this, nor have media writers or critics adequately examined the problem within their own house.
For the Biden administration’s female appointments to succeed, they will need the public to call out when they see sexist coverage of women leaders. After all, it takes guts for women to agree to live a public life.
Even though women writers forged many key genres of primetime postwar television—including the situation comedy, the comedy-variety program, and the anthology drama—their collective efforts have been largely ignored in histories of television’s first Golden Age.
In “The Catastrophist,” Lauren Gunderson expertly captures our new sense of how time passes and memories are made—or not made—by telling an epic yet intimate story about her husband, virologist Nathan Wolfe.
This spring, the first class of young women to earn the rank of Eagle Scout has been making national news. It’s a major accomplishment for them, and at least on the surface, a major step for gender equality. The response however, reveals just how much pervasive sexism still exists in our society.
For many years, women played less visible roles in national and international media, doing their jobs while fighting for their seats at the leadership table.
Now, we celebrate the women that came before us, fought for voting rights, expanded opportunities for women, and broke political, education and social barriers. At the time their contemporaries often criticized these women for being too ambitious.
We are left questioning how we can productively condemn Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s anti-democratic, conspiracy-laden and discriminatory words and actions without turning to superficial, misogynistic attacks.
True and lasting liberation requires the elimination of sexism for everyone, everywhere—including for our worst enemies.
