Engender blog

Five reasons that media coverage of the pay gap is so bad (and why we think we should do better)

Yesterday saw the repeat of a ritual that happens a handful of times a year. An organisation - in this case the Chartered Management Institute - produces a figure it describes as a gender pay gap. News outlets contact organisations working on gender, or women and work, to ask for short quotes that explain both the pay gap and how we're going to fix it. These quotes are then strung together into pieces that are shaky on the facts and slight on analysis. In recent years, as the tenor of public discourse has softened slightly towards women's equality, they've been complemented by editorials denouncing the glacial rate at which the gap is narrowing. A couple of columnists may even take a swing at some particularly egregious examples of workplace discrimination, before the whole subject is unceremoniously bundled into an archive folder to wait for the next pay gap news release.

So why is there such fleeting, insubstantial coverage of this most pressing of gendered concerns? Why are we not having a grand conversation about women and work?

Sexism in advertising, what can we do?

Caroline, Engender's recently recruited Membership Engagement Assistant, explores the effects of sexism in advertising and looks at how we can challenge gender inequality within the media.

I like to think it is now no secret that marketing communications shape the way in which women view themselves and the way that society views women. Advertising agencies (and the media) dictate our perceptions of beauty; creating unobtainable standards and enabling the fashion and beauty industry to capitalise on our insecurities. Is there anything we can do to stop these damaging portrayals of women?

Gender Matters in Media and Culture

For many people, popular culture and the media is the first indication that maybe, just maybe, we don’t have women’s equality yet. The women we see on screen and in print are often stereotyped or tokenistic, or we don’t see them at all. And of course the situation is worse for older women, women of colour, disabled women, lesbian and trans women. One thing women across Scotland have told Engender is that the media, both in print and on screen, can play a huge role in perpetuating women’s inequality.

Guest Post: Women, Westminster, and the media

Guest post by Juliet Swann, Campaigns and Research Officer at the Electoral Reform Society in Scotland.

Working for ERS Scotland I am often asked to comment on women and political life and the equal representation of women. I am also often asked to speak or chair events, and often I have been approached because I am a woman.

This was explicitly the case in three general election events I participated in last month. The first was a Common Weal Edinburgh North and Leith hustings, where they were keen to have the debate chaired by a woman. Equal representation came up in the discussion, not just for women but also for other under-represented groups such as BME and people with disabilities.