Abstract
A textual analysis of 312 columns penned by women in 10 prominent U.S. newspapers shows that one-tenth of articles articulated issues from a feminist standpoint, usually matters of gender equality. Findings show the range of how gender issues are publicly presented by females in major outlets, and highlight that feminist concerns are yet to be mainstreamed through women’s voices in a typically male domain such as the editorial pages.
Keywords
The second-wave feminist dictum, “the personal is political,” stands as both a controversial and significant sociopolitical insight from the era. 1 Feminists popularized the phrase to draw attention to women’s everyday lives and how the harmful dichotomy that situated men within the public/political sphere and women in opposition, occupying the private/personal sphere, prevented equality. 2 Recognizing that this separation caused women’s issues to be seen as personal and, therefore, not political, feminists sought to break down this construction, stressing the fact that the public and private—or the political and personal—are interdependent. 3
This study examines one particular site of media practices: opinion writing and commentary in newspapers. More than 40 years after U.S. feminists began using the phrase, this research offers a means for gauging how politics (as traditionally understood in contemporary American society) and feminist politics (as understood through the dictum of the personal is political) might be expressed through women’s voices in a typically male domain such as the editorial pages. 4
Women and Mass Media
Feminist media scholarship has long examined women’s role in the news industry and criticized the gendered nature of both news production and content. For example, feminist scholars have stressed how media reinforce the idea that women do not belong in politics, are not interested in politics and do not understand politics. 5 Instead, the news industry has a history of promoting women’s news as content occupying the private sphere. 6 Traditionally, these topics have been termed the four Fs—family, food, fashion and furnishings. 7
Along these lines, the concept of “symbolic annihilation” popularized by Gaye Tuchman refers to the way news content constantly makes women, and women’s concerns, invisible in the public arena. 8 Recent studies show that this omission continues to characterize news coverage of women today. For example, a 2011 study found that women were marginalized in Time magazine coverage of the Iraq war, with females representing less than 8 percent of the sources, mainly as civilians or a soldier family member. 9 Research in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom shows that women politicians are constantly trivialized and undermined in the media. 10 Similarly, feminism is often demonized in the news 11 ; for example, a 2002 examination of U.S. electronic news found that feminists were 10 times more likely to be described as “bitches,” “radical” and “bad” compared with women in general. 12 Several scholars have criticized this pervasive tendency of news media, and all media, to denigrate and marginalize women, with a message that ultimately tells society that women are not important. 13
Women are also underrepresented as professionals in the news industry. In 2015, females comprised about a third of newsroom jobs and editorial assignments in U.S. newspapers. 14 A 2007 study showed that women often occupy low-pay, part-time positions, despite accounting for the majority of (mass) communication department/school graduates for the last three decades 15 (although not the majority of graduates pursuing journalism careers). When it comes to the op-ed pages, females are even scarcer, accounting for less than a fourth of all columnists, 16 and often concentrated on women’s pages or women’s issues.
Feminist ethics stresses that the simple act of adding more female writers is not enough to change the too-long-standing structure of news and journalism tailored to upper-class, middle-aged, white males. 17 Instead, feminist ethics argue that a feminist discourse—in its simplest form, one focused on equality—must be present in the opinion pages of U.S. newspapers among other places for actual changes toward equality to occur.
Along with a feminist theoretical framework, this research is guided by a popular dictum of American second-wave feminism—“the personal is political”—to explain that women’s oppression is related to sexist power structures. 18 Feminist theory argues for the politicization of power while addressing the cultural and political status of women, 19 and thus, it expands the definition of political life, as personal choices are seen as intrinsically political. To exclaim “the personal is political” is to remind “that all our small, personal, day-to-day activities have political meaning, whether intended or not.” 20
In claiming the personal is political, feminists note that what happens within the private sphere has political implications, particularly for women’s lives. This study examines how female columnists incorporate feminist politics into news commentary in the most prominent U.S. newspapers to understand how a certain type of feminist politics—those issues typically understood as personal—are made political. Such an endeavor is necessary and timely, as it provides an updated account of how gender issues are publicly presented in mass-mediated discourse and how females on the opinion pages are expressing feminist issues. Thus, the two overarching questions guiding this study are as follows:
RQ1:
How do female columnists write about feminist concerns in their columns?
RQ2:
How do female columnists understand “feminism” or “feminist?”
Method
This article relied on a two-step approach to assess newspaper columns written by women, using textual analysis and also questionnaires to understand women columnists’ own perspectives on their work. Thus, the study was based on an analysis of columns and op-ed pieces penned by women in 10 prominent U.S. newspapers and personal communications with some of those authors.
First, the sample included the general news mainstream newspapers with the largest circulation in each of the U.S. Circulation Bureau’s nine regional divisions. The goal was a sample that might represent a variety of newspapers in the United States. The selected newspapers were The Boston Globe (New England), the New York Times (Mid-Atlantic), 21 The Chicago Tribune (East North Central), The Minneapolis Star Tribune (West North Central), the Washington Post (South Atlantic), The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal (East South Central), The Dallas Morning News (West South Central), The Arizona Republic (Mountain), and The Los Angeles Times (Pacific). In addition, the sample included the national USA Today; the New York Times is a local and national newspaper.
Research assistants identified all texts recognized as columns by these newspapers (e.g., signed articles in the op-ed section, written by an author labeled as “columnist” or opinion pieces presented with a photo of the author). Then they collected all columns written by at least one female author in these newspapers during two months: October 2011 and April 2012. Such purposive sample aimed to monitor separate time periods while avoiding weeks with slower news cycles, such as summertime and end-of-year holidays. The date selection was additionally informed by the time span of the so-called “war on women” in several state legislatures (bills limiting access to abortion and birth control, and restricting funding to reproductive health services) 22 and gender gaps discussed in the context of the 2012 election campaign. This approach yielded 312 columns, excluding duplications, such as syndicated pieces published in several newspapers.
Each of this study’s three coauthors then conducted a textual analysis (qualitative) to answer how these topics were approached. Each column was read by at least two coauthors. The analysis entailed first looking for topics that might be considered feminist or women’s issues, even if they are not traditionally understood as political. While both terms mark a contested terrain, they are often understood to be issues relating to women’s lives and matters of equality. 23 Examples of these concepts include the public/private divide (and its correspondence with other dichotomies of gender), women’s subordination (e.g., unpaid work and lower economic status, child marriage), gender equality (e.g., equal pay, Title IX) and pressures to conform to gender roles, such as traditional family roles. 24 The coauthors were open to any topic that addressed women’s status in society and gender as a complex and culturally constructed system of differentiation, 25 and also convened to discuss ambiguities and dubious cases.
Second, the coauthors read and reread the texts focusing on the meaning-making processes. The goal of this qualitative assessment was to identify common constructions and articulations that tied political issues to gender (in)equality and women’s status from a feminist and personal political perspective. 26 The definition of “personal” stemmed from the framework of the public/private dichotomy in which personal issues are those traditionally understood to be private. The dictum “the personal is political” was at the forefront of the analysis, with the goal of finding instances of writing that moved personal issues into the political realm.
Findings
Of 312 columns, 32 covered, addressed or articulated women’s issues from a feminist standpoint. These issues included, for instance, sex trafficking and women’s exploitation, patriarchal-based gender roles in parenting, gender equality in the workplace, domestic violence and birth control framed as a reproductive right for women. Similarly, a third of the compiled columns were deemed as addressing the traditionally masculine topics of politics, but only five of them framed the discussion within a feminist understanding, this is, addressing power structures and their impact on women’s lives. These columns addressed civil rights, universal registration, an investigation regarding domestic violence of an Arizona politician, introductions of abortion-restricting bills in several U.S. state legislatures and the role of female activists in Liberia’s politics. Likewise, among the 18 columns addressing gender issues, 14 of them discussed the topic from a feminist standpoint. Of 312 columns, nine included the words feminist or feminism—not all in a positive light.
All but one newspaper—The Minneapolis Star Tribune—had at least one column with a feminist understanding of topics. The Boston Globe (8), the New York Times (6) and the Washington Post (6) lead the breakdown by newspaper. These feminist columns were penned by 22 different authors, most prominently Joanna Weiss (3) at The Boston Globe and Maureen Dowd (3) at the New York Times. As shown on Table 1, the most common basis for the commentary provided were citations or sources—both in the overall sample as in the columns relying on feminist approaches—and writers relied significantly less often on personal anecdotes or accounts as evidence to make their cases. In other words, the personal was not necessarily popular among these writers, albeit it did inform their arguments on a regular basis—more so in the feminist-informed columns than in the overall sample.
Sample Overview
In general terms, gender equality was the umbrella issue addressed in the columns with a feminist standpoint; in other words, it framed the discussion focusing on matters of power relations and status affecting women’s lives. Equality at the workplace, broadly defined, was the most common topic, and matters of glass ceilings, flexible work arrangements for mothers and pay equity were often framed in terms of inroads made and the long ways (still) to go for a more egalitarian inclusion of females in society.
For example, in USA Today, Irene Natividad used the abrupt departure of CEO Carol Bartz from Yahoo! to highlight the importance of females heading major corporations, as they generate opportunities for other women in the business, stating, “It’s a shame that so few of them [female CEOs] get their shot in the business world. Too many companies are bypassing a vibrant talent pool, losing that brain power and missing out on new ideas and bold visions.” 27
Similarly, USA Today’s Kimberly Palmer talked candidly about the need of workplace flexibility for mothers if society were to help women still struggling to reconcile their work with family demands. She wrote, . . . [W]omen who have grown up believing they can have it all hit the much harsher reality: Ten-hour-a-day jobs that don’t care when a child is sick; work that must be done via mobile device during family dinners . . . Being home for dinner and bedtime doesn’t signify an ambition gap as much as a choice to invest in both our work and our families. That’s the deeper discussion that could lead to workplace changes that could help all moms, instead of a catfight over who’s working hardest.
28
In a New York Times column, Maureen Dowd listed several examples of women’s lesser status in the United States and abroad, including the Augusta National Golf Club keeping its men-only policy, the Wisconsin legislature repealing a law that helped women by making wage discrimination easier to fight and Saudi Arabia’s refusal to sponsor women on its team for the 2012 London Olympics.
29
Along the same lines, Ruth Marcus posited in the Washington Post that instead of firing up the Mommy Wars or debate on whether there was a war on women, then presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama should instead seriously discuss pay disparities and what legislative measures should be taken to address them, as disputes over equal pay were not likely to disappear. In Marcus’s words, But the existence—and magnitude—of the gender gap pretty much guarantees that we’re going to be talking about gender issues until Election Day. So let’s at least make the conversation about the candidates’ views and issues on which either, as president, could make a real difference, not just a political point.
30
Other kinds of gender gaps were also subject to discussion, from the exclusion of women from the military to the constant undermining of females in media coverage of politics. These columns addressed how women have to endure pervasive messages that dismiss them and undermine them, and seldom condemn the discrimination females endure in the United States and other parts of the world. Fed up with such coverage in the context of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Kathleen Parker, from the Washington Post, highlighted that women do not care only about women’s issues but also about other important matters: Only gravel doesn’t know that the women’s vote is all-important this election season. Never mind the perennial insult that women are monolithic and vote only as their female parts dictate. Women . . . care about jobs and the economy because they are sentient human beings who do, in fact, work (57.7 percent of those over 16), or want to. And they do, in fact, worry that there will be no recognizable nation left if we don’t get serious about the debt and deficit in ways that don’t split the country into warring factions of haves and have-nots.
31
Other columns underscored the importance of women’s inclusion in politics, whether in the United States or abroad, as their insight is relevant for public policy and affairs. In the New York Times, Monica Marks discussed the case of politically active female Tunisians and their paths to elected office, After interviewing 46 female activists and candidates from [Islamist Tunisian party] Ennahda, I found that many turned to politics after experiencing job discrimination, arrests, or years in prison merely because they chose to wear the headscarf or because their families were suspected of Ennahda sympathies. For some of them, this election is as much about freedom of religious expression as anything else.
32
Women’s lesser status and underprotection—for instance, in terms of violence against women, sex trafficking and lack of legal protection in certain countries—also allowed for acknowledgments of some improvements as well as demands for stronger actions and initiatives for them. Juliette Kayyem drew on the U.S. Marine Corps finally allowing women in combat roles to stress that while this might not be giving women full equal status, its significance was clear: “The Marines are taking the Pentagon’s calls for continuing reassessments of gender roles seriously. They may also just recognize that the rules have outlived reality.” 33 Kayyem herself lambasted the military’s less-than-stellar record on sexual assault in another column. “Over 3,000 alleged assaults are reported annually [in the military], but the Pentagon now admits that the actual number of incidents is probably closer to 19,000 due to systemic underreporting,” warned Kayyem, who stressed that protecting women was not only necessary but also an important step for the military recruiting, retaining, and promoting females to the highest levels of command. 34
In hopes of shedding more light on the reasons behind the presence and absence of a feminist standpoint in U.S. newspaper commentary, a small questionnaire was distributed to gain feedback from current professionals, those who had been appointed as valid interlocutors in public debate. 35
In these personal communications with the columnists, the responses received were anchored at opposite ends of the spectrum—reactions that were supportive about research being updated on the current climate for female columnists to responses from authors who were extremely offended that research was even being conducted on what was deemed a dated topic. For example, one columnist wrote in response to receiving the email request asking her to participate in the interview: What do “female” columnists write about? What interests them, or what they can get paid to write about, just like male columnists. The days when female journalists were confined to home economics went out by the 60s. I write a foreign policy column because I am interested in international affairs. Full stop. My point is that there is no such genre as “female columnists.” You stated a theme in a way that belittles women, and seems to assume that rather than behaving as professional journalists, they act primarily as females.
None of the columnists who completed the questionnaire identified themselves as a feminist. The one respondent who was the closest to identifying as a feminist wrote this: I consider myself a supporter of equal rights for females but I don’t know that I consider my work to be feminist. The ultimate equality is not having to confine yourself to what might be considered “women’s” issues. Isn’t that what our predecessors fought for, so that woman had the same opportunities as men?
Within the context of the feminist mantra “the personal is political,” writers were asked about the inclusion of personal details in their work. All columnists agreed it is important to include personal details in the column, not necessarily because of a feminist standpoint but because personal details tend to draw readers in more. When asked to respond if they were familiar with the term the personal is political, a single columnist illustrated an awareness of the connotations of the phrase. She wrote, “It was a term used in the 1960s to rally women, inspiring them to become politically active about issues central to their lives.” Another noted it to be a modern term stating that “everything is political, from what kind of meat you eat to what kind of pillow you choose to sleep on.” Another respondent wrote, “A fairly hackneyed phrase from the 1970s.”
When asked if they felt that there are supposedly female topics, most columnists were adamant that there is no such thing. One respondent did write this: “Probably, though they shouldn’t be confined to women. But issues confronting working mothers and child care as well as the inequality in pay are topics more likely to be of interest to and thus addressed by women writers.” Another columnist recognized the possibility of such topics but claimed she would never “touch” them. She wrote, No, God no. Not any of the ones I’d ever write about, anyway (such as parenting, nutrition or education). If you mean lipstick, fashion, weight loss, “self-image” and celebrity gossip though, yes—I think of those as “women’s” topics and I wouldn’t touch them with a 10-ft pole.
Most respondents replied that they were not aware of what the term feminist politics means. One respondent wrote at length and replied, Is there such a thing anymore? When I think of the term, I think of the mass movements of past eras, of winning the right to be educated and to vote, of burning bras and the ERA and women standing up for equality. Many of those issues remain, notably the fact that women aren’t paid an equal wage to men for equal work. But I don’t see a singular mass movement today to push those issues to the forefront. I associate feminist politics with liberal views and liberalism is on the wane . . . for now.
Another respondent replied with this statement: “I see feminism as the belief system of female superiority, not equality. Their politics are that of putting men down in order to gain superiority, not exactly equality.”
Discussion and Conclusion
The goal of this study was to examine whether and how female columnists write about feminist concerns and whether feminist perspectives were being incorporated into female columnists’ work. A feminist theoretical framework informed the study with the dictum the personal is political at the fore of the analysis. The findings showed that broad feminist concerns are yet to be mainstreamed in the op-ed pages of major U.S. newspapers.
While feminist ideals have historically been marginalized and trivialized in the media, the pervasive invisibility of feminism in major outlets—prominent newspapers heralded as setting the standards for the industry—is quite telling. Inroads have been made, and (some) women have been able to speak their minds in the public sphere of commentary and opinion. However, the lack of women’s voices and feminist concerns also signals the media’s preference for content that aligns with patriarchal understandings, and largely produced for a male audience. In other words, feminist articulations have yet to be mainstreamed, and considering that news relies on what scholars label as a masculine narrative, 36 it is hard for critical discourses such as feminism—which seeks to undermine traditional gender divides and inequalities—to make it into the news media, let alone op-ed writing and commentary. 37
Gender equality—at work, at home and in society in general—marked the main issue addressed by the columnists writing from a feminist standpoint. But again, nine columns of 312 analyzed here used the word feminist or feminism, and not all of them had a positive take on the terms, a finding also evident in questionnaire responses.
As female columnists make up less than a quarter of all U.S. columnists, personal communications were expected to also provide insights into reasons why female columnists themselves felt that the number was so low. The responses did not allow the researchers to analyze this query in a more systematic fashion, but it bears repeating that gender equality cannot be achieved if women do not have access to and equal representation in cultural symbols of power such as the op-ed pages. 38 Perhaps the reception to requests to answer the short questionnaire is a good indication of why so few articles address feminist concerns. Not a single respondent identified herself as a feminist, and more importantly, they distanced themselves from identifying as one.
Given feminism is often framed in a negative light in the media, it is not surprising that these female columnists prefer to distance themselves from the term. Indeed, scholars investigating media coverage of the U.S. feminist movement have found plenty to critique, with media covering feminists as less important, less legitimate and more deviant than antifeminists, 39 and also as a violation of traditional gender roles. 40 Rather than an innocuous representation, such coverage shows the media systems’ cultural investment in particular constructions of feminism. 41 That women in the industry themselves avoid and even dislike any involvement with feminism is quite telling of media’s role in defining and reinforcing specific ways to understand the world. Thus, as a result of consistently negative social implications, feminist is met with resistance in and by the media industry. 42
Furthermore, because newsrooms comprise mostly men, and particularly in the top and most powerful positions, women who achieve high status in a newsroom might be less likely to align with feminist ideals and more likely to line up with the norms and values held by those who promote them. Research shows that women working in newsrooms, particularly in areas dominated by men, are hesitant to highlight their gender through their work, preferring not to be deemed the resident “mommy” or “feminist.” 43 Rather than stand out for their gender, they prefer to simply blend into the newsroom staff. These reasons could contribute to both why few feminist discourses were found in the analysis and also why female journalists were hesitant, even angry, about discussing feminism in relation to their work.
A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in 2015 asked, “Do you think the feminist movement today is focused on changes you want, or not?” 44 While 58 percent of women ages 18 to 34 said yes, older cohorts increasingly disagreed with the statement—with 50 percent of 35- to 49-year-olds and 43 percent of the 50- to 64-year-olds group saying yes. Women in opinion writing positions are usually well into their careers, and on average, the authors of the analyzed columns here had 24 years of experience in the news industry. Arguably, these authors are less invested in feminism than their younger counterparts. This consideration could lead to interesting future research.
One finding the current analysis has yielded is that these female columnists mostly do not use their columns as a vehicle to forward feminist issues or women’s issues, and rarely illustrate the mantra the personal is political. Determining whether this issue is explained at the individual level of analysis, an organizational one or (more likely) at the intersection between both levels highlights the importance of conducting more studies and finding more creative approaches to examine women’s places in the news industry and the socialization of gender equality.
Footnotes
Editors’ Note
This article was accepted for publication under the editorship of Sandra H. Utt and Elinor Kelley Grusin.