By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Staff Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
Women are increasingly filling journalism jobs throughout the U.S., yet a gap remains in the climb to leadership roles.
A 2024 Reuters Institute study found that only 24 percent of top editors throughout 240 news outlets in 12 markets across five continents are women, despite females making up 40 percent of journalists. However, the U.S. is further along than some other countries. Women hold 43 percent of top editorial positions in the U.S., compared to 0 percent in Japan.
Christina Carrega, the national criminal justice reporter for Capital B and Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), shared their thoughts on how representation has improved for women in journalism and what challenges women still face.
Carrega shared that while most recruiters are women, when it comes to the interviewing process female journalists are not typically there.
“CNN had two women recruiters message me on X and LinkedIn, but I was interviewed by men,” said Carrega, pointing out a potential gap in ensuring women are represented in journalism recruitment efforts. “I didn’t have any interviews with women.”
Carrega emphasized the need for equal representation in newsrooms, stating that if there are no African-American, Asian, Latinx, South Asian, Indian or Caribbean female journalists in these roles in newsrooms, these environments are “incomplete.”
She pressed that there should not be a male-dominant, female-dominant industry, “we all should be a part of every single field that calls for a mind, a heart” as both groups bring something to the table the other may not.
But a 2018 Pew Research Center study showed that U.S. newsrooms remain overwhelmingly White finding that 77 percent of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic White journalists.
This appears to still be true according to a 2023 journalism workforce study by the Pew Research Center, Black people only made up 6 percent of the journalists surveyed, reflecting the makeup of U.S. newsrooms.
Carrega shared that the first time she saw a Black woman editor get hired in a newsroom she worked at was in 2019.
“ABC News was my first experience of seeing diversity in newsrooms,” said Carrega, who’s been working in journalism professionally for nearly twenty years. “I was the only Black woman editor hired, and then I migrated to become a reporter. When they moved me out from being an editor to a reporter, they hired a Black woman. That was my first time seeing a Black woman editor getting hired.”
To keep the positive trend going for women journalists, Lees Muñoz emphasized the importance of diverse hiring experiences and creating safe work environments.
“In one of the IWMF reports, our survey showed that younger women journalists leave the news industry because of harassment they receive, primarily online, but also in person,” said Lees Muñoz. “We provide not only physical security training to news organizations but also digital security training. We also work with media organizations on their digital security policies so that if one of their journalists is harassed, they have a specific way that they can respond to it.”
“There’s got to be this recognition that it’s important to have your newsroom be more diverse and look more like the communities where they’re reporting,” added Lees Muñoz.
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