Guardian study finds just 22.6% of journalists are female

The New York Times newsroom in 1942. By Marjory Collins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 The Guardian today published the findings from its research into gender in the press, based on “a simple count of newspaper bylines” and those appearing on the Today programme on Radio 4.

The bylines were said to have been taken from articles published in a total of seven newspapers from 13 June to 8 July. The Guardian reports that the research, led by Kira Cochrane, found that women journalists accounted for just 22.6 per cent, as opposed to 77.4 per cent for male reporters.

National papers were all shown to have large gender gaps in byline averages. The Daily Mail and the Guardian recorded the lowest male dominance at 68 per cent male and 72 per cent male respectively.

In its ever-open approach to data the Guardian has made all the data available as a downloadable spreadsheet and is asking its audience to get involved by posing the question: “What can you do with this data?”

Read more here.

Research published earlier this year, commissioned by the Women in Journalism group, found that almost three quarters of journalists working in the national press were male.

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