FEMM: Televised stereotypes affect female labour market access

“The labour market is still not open enough for women,” says Kirsten Lühmann, chairwoman of the CESI committee on womens’ rights and gender equality. One important reason for this inequality is seen in the way men and women are presented in the media, in particular on TV. “Men are still shown as mechanics, lawyers and medical doctors, women are either presented in classical female roles such as nurses or hairdressers or as unrealistic superwomen,” says Lühmann. Pamela Morinière of the International Federation of Journalists who intervened as guest speaker in the committee meeting on December 7th confirms this experience. “There is certainly still progress to be made in this area.” Lühmann requires binding ethical guidelines for public and private media. “The image of women in the media must improve. The projected image of women does not correspond with today’s society’s realities,” says Lühmann announcing a CESI resolution on the subject.

“So far no binding measures to present women as equal have been introduced in the media,” says the FEMM committee’s chairwoman. Lühmann considers it a deplorable fact that women are still treated differently in the media although the media play a crucial role in the shaping of public images, ideas and ideals. “We have to stop these televised stereotypes. They have a negative effect on womens’ labour market opportunities. What is more, girls or young women don’t even dare to go for technical or classical male jobs because they lack corresponding role models,” says the chairwoman. Lühmann believes that the European trade unions have to play an active role in overcoming the inequalities this creates. The chairwoman deplores that regarding the gender issue, TV and reality do not overlap. Women are not realistically presented on TV. Lühmann believes that more young women would be interested in technical professions, if they had appropriate female role models shown on TV.

“The picture given by the media necessarily impacts the public perception,” says Lühmann. When it comes to gender equality, the ongoing General Media Monitoring Project is providing hard facts. The project analyses the role of women in media around the world every five years. The last report was surveyed in 2010 and recently published. “The results are still rather disappointing. Women are stereotyped by the media,” says Pamela Morinière. The CESI committee claims that journalists’ professional ethics need adaptation. “There have been attempts to raise the awareness of journalists, but very little has been done when it comes to schools of journalism,” says Morinière. Still, there are also good examples. The Swedish for example introduced quota for the Swedish public television news programmes. Some noteworthy efforts have also been made at the European level. “Screening Gender” and “Portraying Politics” are programmes that have been developed by European journalists’ networks to help the news journalists to draw more attention to improve gender portrayal in the media.