Ethiopian-Israeli women working in mainstream journalism: Linking Ethiopian,black and Israeli identities through news-making

Abstract

Taking an intersectional approach, this study conceptualizes how the complex subjectivities of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists – who contend with dual exclusion and discrimination (racial and gendered) – emerge in their everyday work experiences. Thematic analysis of narrative interviews with 12 Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists reveals a complicated picture of their professional experience derived from the intersection of their gender and racial identities. They face barriers to integrating into the profession and the challenges of tokenism, but they also find sources of strength in their professional experience through the advantages of Ethiopian femininity and the opportunity to play advocacy roles. I argue that while their societal positioning renders them marginalized within dominant structures, it also allows them to confront oppressive dominant structures. Their journalistic identity empowers them by linking their perceived advocacy role deriving from their marginal Ethiopian identity with their Israeli identity.

Keywords

Advocacy journalism Ethiopian-Israeli women everyday work experience intersectionality racial identity tokenism women journalists

Introduction

Most research on gender and news production explores women as a unified category, ignoring inequalities amongst them of race, ethnicity, religion, geography or sexuality. A rich literature exists on African-American journalists (e.g. Broussard, 2004; Bundy, 2006), but none of these studies takes an intersectional approach. More recently, Steiner (2012) and Meyers and Gayle (2015) have suggested we pay close attention to the intersectionality of multiple aspects of social identity in studying newsrooms and journalism. Following this call, I situate news production research within the intersectionality of social identity, focusing on a case study of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists who must contend with dual exclusion: racial and gendered. Studying the experience of a minority group of women may refine social understanding of the challenges and contributions of diversity in newsrooms.

The study aims to analyse how the intersecting and marginalized identities of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists shape their work experience. It will investigate how their different axes of identity emerge in their journalistic work experience. More specifically, I aim to understand how their professional identity and their intersectional positioned identity shape their work experience: whether they serve as barriers, enforce a hybrid identity, or serve as resisting and subverting means against hegemonic power relations – gendered and otherwise.

Focusing on Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists employed in mainstream news (television, radio and digital newsrooms in Hebrew), this study conceptualizes how their complex subjectivities emerge in their work experiences: What mechanisms promote inclusion of these women within the profession of journalism; what mechanisms exclude them from and within the profession; and what strategies do they adopt and develop to cope with the barriers they confront?

I use the concept of ‘everyday experience’ to refer to the complex array of experiences of marginalized women journalists in gendered social sites as well as within the racial context of the subordinated group in relation to the dominant group. Everyday experience is not just personal. The political dimension mediates through everyday events, and since the experiences in question are recurring, systematic and cumulative, they are amenable to generalisation (Herzog, 2004).

In the following sections, I will first present how news-making is gendered. Then, I will present the background of the group at the heart of the study, starting with how Ethiopian Jews became incorporated within the symbolic boundaries of Israeli nationhood and focusing on the experience of Ethiopian Jewish women as a dual minority – racial and gendered. Finally, I will briefly present major trends in current Israeli journalism. Based on narrative interviews with 12 Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists, I will analyse the main barriers they face as well as the strengths they demonstrate. Last, I will argue that while their societal positioning renders them marginalized within dominant structures, it also allows them to confront oppressive dominant structures. Their journalistic identity empowers them by linking their perceived advocacy role deriving from their marginal Ethiopian identity and their Israeli identity.

The newsroom as a gendered social site

News media are perceived as crucial to women and other excluded minorities seeking fuller social involvement (Byerly, 2004). A common assumption in feminist media studies is that the increasing number of women working in journalism will have an impact on news media, especially on the representation of women and women’s issues. These studies maintain that the life experiences unique to women will influence news perspectives, tone and ethics (Byerly and Padovani, 2017; Melin-Higgins, 2004). Studies attempting to determine whether women journalists make a difference in terms of news content, including studies on women in leadership roles, are inconsistent. Some studies affirm gender differences in reporting (e.g. Correa and Harp, 2011; Rodgers and Thorson, 2003), while others contend gender has minimal effect (e.g. Everbach, 2005; Meyers and Gayle, 2015). Many studies argue there is a dialectic interplay between the individual and social structure in news production that mediates the gendered effects (Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). However, media studies scholars insist that we need a greater diversity of people in news-making and news-making leadership to make any difference in culture and practice (Everbach, 2006; Padovani et al., 2017; Steiner, 2014).

Research on gender in newsrooms began with a ‘body-count approach’, which conceptualized gender as a ‘fixed attribute’ within media organisations (De Bruin, 2014). This work revealed a considerable global increase in the number of women in journalism over the last four decades, which stalled between 2005 and 2015 (Global Media Monitoring Project [GMMP], 2015). Studies over the years have emphasized the persistent patterns of gendered exclusion, segmentation and stratification in the profession (Steiner, 2014).

Israeli journalism also saw an accelerated entrance of women into the profession after the mid-1970s; but this plateaued following the mid-1990s, keeping women a minority in the profession (Lachover and Lemish, 2018; Tsfati and Meyers, 2012). However, similar to the global trend (GMMP, 2015), there is a greater presence of women journalists in television, especially as news presenters, than in other media. Additionally, even today women’s roles and salaries in Israeli newsrooms do not equal men’s (Lachover and Lemish, 2018), which can be explained by the prevailing gender inequality in Israel (Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2016).

A meaningful global development in the mid-1990s in the study of gendered aspects of newsroom culture was the use of qualitative analysis to examine how gender is constructed through daily social practices and routines – both organisational and professional (De Bruin, 2014). Such studies conceptualize gender as performative or enacted in daily life. Therefore, they assume that fragmented subjects have multiple identities that undergo continuous construction and renegotiation. Studies from this perspective argue that ‘masculine’ norms and values of journalism masquerade as the professional routines journalists are expected to follow. Moreover, these routines could be seen as organisational imperatives in disguise, ‘fed’ by these ‘masculine’ norms and values (Melin-Higgins, 2004).

Phenomenological studies of journalism also demonstrate how differently women and men journalists experience their working environment; men often see it as professionally neutral whereas women identify it as having male-determined norms (Byerly and Padovani, 2017). Testimonies of women journalists show that women feel they are passed over for promotion, patronized and trivialized because of their sex or status as working mothers (Padovani et al., 2017). Indeed, phenomenological studies pay special attention to the voices emanating from the field and provide the space for hearing what the women themselves have to say.

This current study shifts the spotlight from hegemonic women journalists by adopting an intersectional approach, focusing instead on Ethiopian-Israelis, a minority group experiencing a social change following their immigration to Israel. Their work experience must be explored using their own histories and within their social, cultural and political contexts.

Ethiopian Jewish women in Israel

Ethiopian Jews came to Israel in the late 1970s, most of them arriving in two airlifts, in 1984–1985 and 1991. Their immigration process involved trauma and loss in a long journey through Sudan (Ben-Eliezer, 2008). They were awarded full symbolic membership in the Israeli polity based on the Zionist narrative of ‘integrating of the exiles’ and the cultural repertoire of the Jewish melting pot (Lamont et al., 2016). As of late 2019, this small group numbered 155.3 thousand people (making up 1.8% of the general Israeli population), of which 56 percent were born in Ethiopia (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2020). They are starkly distinct from other Jewish groups, not only in their dark skin colour, but also in their non-rabbinical practice of Judaism and their traditional way of life.

These characteristics have led to various forms of scrutiny of the legitimacy of their membership in the nation-state (Zawdu, 2016). Members of the Ethiopian group continue to experience exclusion based on skin colour (Lamont et al., 2016). They have also been patronized as immigrants from a third world country who should be managed through special policies in an institutional context, which reinforces their position as a ‘social problem’ (Ben-Eliezer, 2008). This racism and discrimination are considered the main explanations for why Ethiopians, including second generation, have had difficulty integrating into Israeli society (Ben-Eliezer, 2008). Despite a growing professional middle class, the social-economic status of Ethiopian Israelis is still low in terms of education, housing and employment (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2020).

In spite of all these challenges, most Ethiopian Israelis exhibit a sense of national belonging and full identification with Israeli Jewish polity (Lamont et al., 2016). However, they are aware of the stigma of ‘Ethiopianness’ in Israeli society, which has led the younger generation to develop modes of resistance against racism. These involve deconstructing their Israeli identity and reconstructing it with a new identity intertwined with global blackness (black history, music, fashion, etc.). Still, this hybrid identity meshes Israeliness, Jewishness and blackness (Zawdu, 2016). A major wave of protest emerged in 2015, triggered by a viral video of a police officer beating up a uniformed soldier of Ethiopian descent. The protest indicated a grassroots movement seeking to promote the equality and full integration of Ethiopians (Lamont et al., 2016). In July 2019, another nationwide wave of protest focusing on police brutality erupted in response to the fatal police shooting of an 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli. This protest was strongly influenced by the African-American Black Lives Matter campaign (Hermann, 2019).

According to Abu-Rabia-Queder (2019), the positionality of Ethiopian-Israeli women locates them at the intersection of forms of oppression based on race, gender and nationality. Indeed, Ethiopian Jewish women who emigrated to Israel experienced absorption policies that were uniquely patronising. These reeducated them to play the roles of mother and housekeeper according to an ostensibly Western model, perpetuating their economic dependence on men (Herzog in Yassour-Borochowitz and Wasserman, 2018). But a modern Israeli lifestyle also exposed Ethiopian-Israeli women to a relatively gender-equal regime, leading them to higher education and occupational integration. Consequently, they were quicker than Ethiopian men to learn Hebrew and gradually began demanding an equal say in family decisions (Shabtay and Kacen, 2005). Likewise, Ethiopian-Israeli women demonstrate more willingness than Ethiopian men to integrate and therefore are perceived as ‘agents of change’; they become more independent and empowered than their menfolk (Fenster, 1998). Although many of them are still employed in menial work and report feelings of alienation and low self-esteem, a growing number have managed to break through the gender and racial boundaries, becoming token women of colour in their occupational fields (Yassour-Borochowitz and Wasserman, 2018).

Journalism practice requires a presence and voice in the public sphere. It therefore presents a variety of challenges for Ethiopian-Israeli women based on their multiple and unique axes of identity in a patriarchal society – especially for those who work in mainstream Israeli newsrooms. However, there has been no exploration of how many Ethiopian-Israeli women work in Israeli journalism or what their characteristics are.

The landscape of Israeli journalism

Contemporary Israeli journalism, like other Western media systems, is characterized by increased corporatisation of news organisations, significant concentration, and cross-media conglomeration. These changes follow the overall neoliberalisation process evident in Israel. The dominance of a commercial logic has increased the profession’s precariousness as well as journalists’ vulnerability to pressures, given the near elimination of unionized journalistic work (Davidson and Meyers, 2015; Meyers and Davidson, 2014). Throughout this process, most Israeli mainstream journalists have been – and still are – echoing hegemonic national attitudes (Soffer, 2015).

The current study focuses on Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists integrated within mainstream Israeli news media. However, it is important to note that a minor parallel operation of news platforms developed in response to Ethiopian immigration. Following Caspi and Elias’s (2011) differentiation between two prototypes of ethnic minority media, I identify the first of these platforms as media-for minorities, where news in Amharic is broadcasted through a public Israeli radio channel (REKA), unifying various broadcasts for immigrants under a single roof. The second prototype – media-by minorities – is seen in the private Israeli-Ethiopian television channel (IETV), which broadcasts in both Amharic and Tigrinya. According to Kaneh-Shalit (2015), IETV plays a dual role: promoting integration into majority society but also cultivating a cultural and ethnic enclave. Kaneh-Shalit therefore defines IETV as being between media-for and media-by minorities.

The study

I adopted a phenomenological approach because it acknowledges persons as multidimensional beings in particular social, cultural and historical life circumstances (Van Mannen, 1990). More specifically, I based the study on a qualitative work-history methodology that is often used to analyse social class issues and study working women (Ladkin, 2004). Work-history methodology allows analysis of the relationship between an individual’s work experiences and structural aspects of the profession and political, social and economic conditions (Ladkin, 2004). The definition of ‘journalist’ in this study reflects an understanding of journalism as a profession and an institutional practice: that is, ‘individuals who contribute journalistic content to news outlets as either employees or freelancers and who earn at least half of their income from their work for news organisations’ (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 9–10).

I interviewed 12 Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists aged 20–40. Those interviewees that were well-known in the field connected me with the others. In order to preserve the participants’ anonymity, I present them here only briefly. Eight of them were born in Israel soon or a few years after their parents immigrated, while four were young (0–6) when they emigrated. They grew up in different areas of Israel and ranged in their levels of higher education, with the three youngest, who were in their early 20s, having no post-secondary education at all. The interviewees worked in a variety of mainstream national news organisations in Hebrew directed at all Israelis: radio, television and online news channels that accompany newspapers. These news organisations include private and public ownership, and all except one are in the center of Israel. However, most of the interviewees had experience in more than one news outlet, and few had experience in more than one medium. Six of them worked in the profession at the time of the interview, and six had left the profession in the last seven years. Their journalistic experience ranged from 1 to 17 years, with a mean of 8 years. This proportion of women who gave up journalism is not surprising given the common ‘revolving door’ trend amongst women journalists (Smith, 2015) and the rapid turnover characterising Israeli journalism (Meyers and Davidson, 2014). It should be emphasized that the interviewees represent almost all Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists, and of all those I contacted, only two refused to be interviewed.

The interviews were conducted November–December 2019, mostly in coffee houses of the interviewees’ choice, and they lasted between 1 and 2.5 hours. Most interviewees were enthusiastic about the project and eager to talk openly about their professional trajectories and themselves. I used a narrative interview, seeing the interviewees as active subjects in authoring their experience and allowing them to tell their own stories in detail and in their own words (Gubrium and Holstein, 2002). More specifically, I used a ‘defined self-narrative’ approach (Spector-Marsel, 2011), which is a type of narrative interview that tends to be relatively more one-dimensional and unambiguous than life-story interviews. After opening the interview by explaining the study’s aim, I gave the interviewee an open-ended request: ‘Please tell me your experience with regard to your work in journalism’. I followed the principle of ‘minimum structure and maximum depth’ (Lester, 1999: 2) and only presented key topics towards the end of the interview if participants did not themselves refer to them. These topics were the following: the reason they chose journalism; their options for career advancement; how male co-workers and male sources treated them; the challenges they encountered and how they overcame them; their views of the state of women journalists of their social group; and what their journalistic work means in the context of their identity and lives. This format allowed the flexibility to explore unexpected themes. All interviewees were recorded with their permission, and I transcribed the recordings verbatim, resulting in over 240 pages of transcribed manuscripts. In order to maintain confidentiality, I have changed the names of the participants while trying to preserve the ‘spirit’ of the name: replacing Ethiopian names with other Ethiopian names, biblical names with other biblical names, etc. The interviews were closely read to extract important and repeating themes based on grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) while maintaining sensitivity to the interviewee’s language and ‘definition of the situation’ (Goffman, 1967) in order to inductively comprehend each person’s subjective understanding. I also conducted interviews with two strategic informants involved in unique journalism courses directed at Ethiopian Israelis.¹

Analysis of the interviews

Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed a complicated picture of the professional experience of the Ethiopian women journalists derived from the intersection of their gender and racial identities. They experienced barriers to integrating into the profession and the challenges of tokenism, but they also found sources of strength in their professional experience through the advantages of Ethiopian femininity and the opportunity to play advocacy roles.

Barriers to the profession

All 12 interviewees shared that before they integrated into the profession, they did not see working in journalism as a realistic occupational option for their future. They emphasized that they had little exposure to journalism in their early life and lacked any comprehensive picture of the field of Israeli journalism. They specifically mentioned they were not familiar with Galei-Tzahal – a national radio network operated by the Israeli Defense Forces (hereafter, Galatz). In the Israeli context, Galatz is the most promising entry to the profession, since it offers young Israelis – both men and women – an opportunity to practice journalism during mandatory army service. Galatz is considered very selective and prestigious, and for years was characterized as hegemonic and accused of lacking social pluralism (Soffer, 2015). Indeed, all interviewees felt that Galatz was off limits to them, and many admitted they were unfamiliar with the option to work there.

All the interviewees argued that because of their social marginality, they lacked the interpersonal connections needed to integrate into the profession. Indeed, mobilisation in the Israeli journalism industry is still largely based on informal routes. This echoes studies on Ethiopian Israelis, that indicate they are not well connected to the mainstream channels through which jobs are found (Swirski and Yosef, 2005). Moreover, a few of the interviewees suggested their low economic status prevented them from pursuing a profession that cannot guarantee occupational stability (Meyers and Davidson, 2014). For example, Liraz, a young journalist with serious doubts about staying in the profession explained:

Journalism is not a profession you can make a living from, and in our community, you need to earn your money. Our parents are not professors. We are the second generation of parents who immigrated and worked at whatever work there was.²

Liraz thus perceives journalism as a profession for privileged people, not suitable for Ethiopian Israelis.

Therefore, it is not surprising that all of the interviewees except one got into Israeli mainstream news organisations through special programs that provide opportunities to Ethiopian Israelis in the Israeli media. The other interviewee entered the profession following the 2015 protest due to her news organisation’s efforts to recruit an Ethiopian journalist. Indeed, diversity in the labour market has become an urgent national subject in Israeli society since the early 2000s, targeting special populations including Ethiopian Israelis (Sliter and King, 2014). Beginning in the mid-2000s and more clearly in recent years, social organisations, including those in the Ethiopian-Israeli community, have recognized the mainstream news media as a crucial site of community discrimination, explained partially by the scarcity of journalists of Ethiopian extract (Behahr, 2004). Consequently, these organisations have started to cooperate with mainstream news organisations, striving to integrate Ethiopian-Israelis into the news industry (Palmor, 2016).

There are three main special programs directed to integrate Ethiopian Israelis into mainstream journalism. The interviewees participated in all three of these. The first was founded in 2005–2006 by the civil social organisation ‘Agenda’. It included two courses aiming to train young Ethiopian-Israeli people in journalism (Saragusti, Personal Communication, July 22, 2019). The second was initiated in 2018–2019 by an association that aims to change Israeli public opinion of Ethiopian Israelis. It included two journalism courses that cooperated with two popular news organisations (Dresler, Personal Communication, January 24, 2020). The interviewees who participated in the programs objected to the idea of special programs aimed only at Ethiopians, but they recognized the courses’ professional contributions and valued the advantage of a homogenous environment:

I couldn’t say that I loved the fact that it was a separate course but I understood that I need this with them, with the people of the community, and that it is easier, it was a greenhouse, asking stupid questions. . . it gave me confidence (Esther).

Another main channel for Ethiopian-Israeli women to enter Israeli mainstream journalism is through Galatz’s affirmative action policy. Until 2017, Galatz recruited Ethiopian Israelis through routes that did not allow them to participate in their journalism course. As a result, they could only take on inferior professional journalistic roles. The interviewee who integrated into Galatz in this phase reported that she experienced this as two castes, serving in different roles from others and being excluded from symbolic rewards (such as the special shoulder straps indicating you took the course). Since 2017, Israeli Ethiopians joining Galatz do participate in the journalism course, however, they are still recruited through a special procedure. The interviewees who were part of this program reported that they still feel the process reproduces their inferiority.

All interviewees reported that they experienced their presence at the news organisation as ‘others’ – that is, as not socially belonging. They saw this as due to a ‘cultural gap’, but also as a result of the social caution exhibited by their newsroom colleagues. The feeling of being ‘other’ can be perpetuated through prosaic things, such as the absence of suitable make-up for dark skin in the make-up room. However, the women often emphasized the periods of the 2015 and 2019 protests as the most challenging. During these periods, some experienced anger and disappointment at their colleagues’ non-solidarity. A few chose to confront them, while others felt loneliness, detachment and embarrassment: as described by Mor:

The time of the protest was not a good time for me. Not that someone said anything to me . . . but I felt they were all looking at me. I was walking around in the newsroom and . . . likely it was a bit in my head, but I felt like they were walking on eggshells around me.

One interviewee shared that in order to fit in she adopted a ‘whitening’ strategy, trying to imitate the way hegemonic reporters present: ‘At the beginning, I imitated the intonation of journalists from television so I had a sound which was not mine. I later came to understand that’ (Esther). A few interviewees mentioned that their superiors discriminated against them, for example, preventing them from doing tasks seen as more difficult. Some others felt it took them too long to climb the ladder. All the interviewees referred to experiencing discrimination from sources who did not expect to meet a black woman as a reporter. Sapir described a typical first encounter with sources:

First of all, they [sources] are surprised. I can recognize their surprise. Sometimes you get comments that try to be nice but end up twisted. Once, I sat with one of the ministers and he was trying to tell me about all the Ethiopians he’s familiar with. I was trying to ignore that. Once you build a personal relationship with a source, it doesn’t matter.

Advantages of Ethiopian femininity

Surprisingly, most of the interviewees presented their femininity as an advantage to getting into the profession. As proof, they pointed to the fact that most of the Ethiopian Israelis who have integrated into Israeli mainstream journalism through the years were women. Indeed, at the time of the interviews, there were only two Ethiopian-Israeli men working in mainstream Israeli journalism. Some supported this by arguing that Ethiopian-Israeli women attain more high-visibility positions than Ethiopian men because of their looks. As Esther argued: ‘The ones that get to the screen, they choose them very selectively. . . they are beautiful. It is easier for Ethiopian women, their beauty. . .’. Esther’s argument echoes criticism in feminist media research of the high proportion of women as television news presenters, based on the perception that women are pleasing objects for viewers (Holland, 1987). In the context of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists, this is exacerbated by the racial aspect – the perception of them as exotic women. However, Esther recounts, ‘I was often told, you don’t have an Ethiopian look’, implying that a feminine Ethiopian appearance is an advantage as long as it is not ‘too Ethiopian’ – that is, as long as it is embodied in Western styles, such as straightened hair and non-traditional clothing.

The interviewees defined their advantage in comparison with Ethiopian men. They argued that Ethiopian-Israeli men are perceived as threatening while Ethiopian-Israeli women are unthreatening:

The stigma around black men is difficult: violence, crime . . . they [authorities] attach all these to them. None of this is part of us [women]. About Ethiopian women, they say: ‘How pretty and what cuties they are’. From good looks, it is much easier to progress. No doubt it is easier for women. (Hodaya)

Here, Hodaya links the well-known racial discrimination of black men by Israeli police (Peled, 2018) to their integration into journalism. Her argument that Ethiopian-Israeli women are ‘privileged’ in this aspect echoes the gendered discrimination seen in dance-clubs in Israel, where dark-skinned men are screened at the entrance while dark-skinned women are not (Tirosh, in process). She further elaborates on how these gendered practices of discrimination affect the self-image of Ethiopian men and consequently their motivation to work in mainstream journalism:

It is easier for Ethiopian women, period. Men are often frustrated. I can understand their frustration. I have never had the experiences they have with the police. No policeman approached me, ever . . . and to an Ethiopian man, he approaches, no matter who is he. These experiences are sort of a scar and he closes himself . . . and the woman, she actually progresses by far, and the man stays back . . . Not only in the media, but in general. [Ethiopian] women are more successful . . . their Hebrew, their assimilation.

The interviewees often based this insight on their own relatives’ experience. However, this gendered adjustment amongst Ethiopian immigrants to Israel is also documented in studies (Fenster, 1998). As evident from the Hodaya’s examples, the interviewees perceive Ethiopian-Israeli men as victims of the Israeli institution and express compassion for them.

Moreover, a few of the interviewees revealed they have consciously used their image of nonthreatening black femininity and the feelings of compassion towards them in their work with male sources. Sapir, for example, noted,

I even exploited that. They often identify me as less threatening; I could really feel that. Once, I had this meeting, it was a first meeting . . . with a businessman. I was trying to get some sensitive information from him. At the beginning, on the phone, he was not so sympathetic; I told him, let’s meet. Once I arrived . . . he told me: ‘I’m happy to see that you are an Ethiopian and I want to help you’

This tactic of pre-empting feminine stereotypes (such as being weak or sexually desirable) with male news sources to promote professional aims and to resist existing male dominance in the workplace is well-known amongst Israeli hegemonic women journalists as well (Lachover and Lemish, 2018). But in the case of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists, their adoption of the ‘help me’ strategy, which is based on the social inferiority of her perceived origin, demonstrates the effect of the intersectionality of gender and race in journalism practice.

Challenges of being a token

As presented, most of the interviewees broke into the profession through special programs aiming to integrate Ethiopian Israelis. They have become the only or one of very few Ethiopians in their news organisation. They are all completely aware of their token status: ‘They were joking the whole time; we have the religious guys and we have the Arab girl and we now have the Ethiopian girl’ (Shahar). They often define themselves as a ‘fig leaf’, reflecting their understanding that although their organisation excludes Ethiopian Israelis, the current public atmosphere requires ethnic diversity, especially with regard to Ethiopians. As Yafa put it: ‘I think we are in a state where diversity is their state of mind. They know they are inspected with a scrupulous social magnifying glass’. A number of interviewees pointed out that following the latest protests, newsrooms managers were specifically looking to recruit Ethiopians – or more precisely, an Ethiopian, since one representative is enough to brand the newsroom as diverse.

Being a token carries a heavy price (Kanter, 1977); and, indeed, all interviewees struggle with this status. A few admitted it irritated them, but they realized this is their route to integrate into the profession, as Michal argued: ‘I can’t fix the whole world. This is how things are. I will exploit it, and I will integrate because I’m an Ethiopian, and I will succeed on my behalf’. One interviewee admitted she left the job because she assumed she would always remain a token. She therefore decided to move to a profession where her origin would be a less meaningful factor. She concluded, ‘If I were a white woman, I would have stayed in journalism’ (Shahar). Others were also self-reflective about how being a token constantly challenges their professional self-confidence:

I’m always scared that because I’m an Ethiopian they think they should go easy on me, give me the lighter missions because I can’t handle the more serious ones . . . I was watching my Arab colleague and told myself they think . . . These girls, coming in without background in news. The Arab, well, Hebrew is not her first language, so she could have often been stuck not knowing the words, but she was very talented (Mor).

While Ethiopian immigrants construct their self-identity as full members of the Israeli national community because of their Jewishness, Palestinian citizens of Israel, although members of the Jewish state, are not full participants in the Jewish polity (Lamont et al., 2016). Therefore, when the interviewee compares herself to her Arab colleague, who is not a native Hebrew-language speaker like her, she exposes her deep professional insecurity and sense of inferiority.

However, interviewees reported that their experience changed over the years with their seniority; they insisted that while they got the job due to their origin, they were promoted due to their efforts and accomplishments. But their tokenism requires them to stay cautious around their organisations’ interests. For example, Shahar refused her newsroom’s request to give an interview on a popular news platform, seeing it as a cynical exploitation of her origin in favour of the organisation’s public relations: ‘I felt that it is not because I’m a good reporter, but because I am black. It photographs well . . . so I said no to this’.

Typical of token workers’ experience (Jackson et al., 1995), many interviewees emphasized their need to work hard and excel to prove themselves to their supervisors and also to avoid harming opportunities for other Ethiopian Israelis. A few emphasized their need to be a role model not only for other Ethiopian-Israeli women, but also for Ethiopian Israelis in the eyes of the wider Israeli society.

The reporters amongst the interviewees argued that their token status creates an expectation that they will cover only Ethiopian community issues or, as Moran defined it, they will become an ‘Ethioyopedeia’. They argued that concentrating on community issues would narrow their role, hinder their career, and hold them back. While at the beginning of their careers it was difficult to resist their organisations’ efforts to put them in this position, they feel they have managed to clarify this. As Sapir explained,

At the beginning the desk was expecting me . . . you are an Ethiopian, bring us stories on Ethiopians. I was not going to do that. I’m a [omitted] reporter; if there is a story about Ethiopians that is very important, I will be the first one to deal with it. I didn’t want them to define what I’m doing.

Many adopted the practice of being what they defined as ‘a channel’ between the community and their news organisation, but they insisted on not being responsible for covering the community.

Practices of advocacy journalism

A few of the interviewees described their professional motivation by correlating their personal characteristics with the traits and talents needed in the journalistic profession, especially their passion or talent for writing. This reflects a previous Israeli study on journalists’ life histories (Meyers and Davidson, 2014). However, the most dominant aspect in the career narratives of all Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists was their striving for social change, echoing ‘advocacy journalism’ sensitivities (Janowitz, 1975).

In a few cases, interviewees linked their motivation to become a journalist to a specific event in their childhood where they saw the power of journalism as a means to fight against racism. For example, when Moran’s young brother was refused entry to a school because of his race, her mother turned to a journalist, who published the story; following the publication, her brother was accepted. She concluded, ‘There, I began to understand that there is no justice . . . and each time I met this injustice, I asked myself: ‘What am I going to do with this?’ It really bothered me. How much power do I have to change that?’

A number of the interviewees referred to the fact that they rose up in the absence of any black role models on Israeli television; Yafa, for example, shared that when she was looking for role models and couldn’t find any on Israeli television, she moved to foreign television: ‘First, it was Oprah, and later on all the good reporters on CNN’. Some of the interviewees linked this personal experience to the development of their own roles, striving to change things for their young siblings, their own children, and the whole community. Therefore, interviewees often defined their journalistic work as ‘a mission’, to fight Israel’s racism against Ethiopian Israelis by giving voice to the silenced Ethiopian community.

Most interviewees were conscious of the political aspect of their role. Moran, for example, defined her work in explicit political terms:

What I’m going to say might sound academic, but the personal is political. Tony Morrison once said that she wrote because there were no things she wanted to read. I really believe in that sentence. It’s relevant to journalism as it is relevant to creation.

In practical terms, Moran defined her professional aim as ‘to show as many [Ethiopian Israelis] images on the screen as possible and to take them out of their permanent template’. This perception of their professional role often conflicts with their professional identity as journalists in mainstream news organisations. For example, Hodaya shared her conflict in coping with her community when the 2019 protest erupted in response to the fatal police shooting of an 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli:

I feel split. On the one hand, I have to fight against my colleagues at the desk. To explain to them that what they are doing with their unpleasant [racist] headlines about the family [whose child was shot by a policeman], who I’m in touch with . . . and I need to fight with them; and [on the other hand] the community is very critical about the media and angry, and they are on Facebook and the networks [begging me to] do something. . . These are the most difficult situations for me. (Hodaya)

Most interviewees expressed a sense they could influence how their organisation covered Ethiopian Israelis: ‘I feel I have power, and I feel that if I want to bring something to the front, it happens. I feel there is a will if I bring new and fresh content, . . . but at the same time, I can say it is tough’ (Moran). For some, the warm reaction of their community to their efforts is a powerful factor in their striving for change: ‘It is something I took on myself, to fix the injustice . . . and I see the improvement is happening and the reactions [of the community] on Facebook are so warming’ (Hodaya). The interviewees often emphasized their influence on the language of coverage, which is an explicit aspect. For example, they were able to replace the use of the discriminating term ‘the Ethiopians’ protest’ to ‘the protest of Israelis originated from Ethiopia’, arguing that the protestors are first of all Israelis. They argued that in the periods when the protests hit the news, they monitored the coverage daily and reported to their editors on a lack of point of view or wording that might reflect stigmas around protestors. This was often done with the help of the community activists who applied to them. They defined their striving for change as constant work, and even a ‘battle’ in the newsroom – however, one that is succeeding. As Hodaya stated,

I am proud I have made the newsroom more understanding and sensitive with regard to Ethiopians. I have implemented many things and shattered stigmas. I encouraged them to do a series on the community, and they [editors] consult me on everything related to Ethiopians.

Moreover, they experience tension between their perceived professional advocacy role and their resistance against token status. As Abaynesh put it,

It bothers me all the time. When I should raise the flag and insist and when I should watch myself [of becoming the representative of the community]. It is a continuous effort against myself. . . this is the disadvantage of being other.

Yafa revealed this tension as well and suggested her strategy of coping with it:

Sometimes, it’s like you are burning to say this and to put the Ethiopians on the map, but you should think of the long run, of how it influences your professionality. You need to know how to balance in order to survive in this world.

This coping strategy of balancing between conflicting demands is adopted by most Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists.

As seen in Hodaya’s example above, the interviewees sense of social change is also reflected in the social relations of their own organisations. Some pointed to the fact that for many of their colleagues, they are their first Ethiopian-Israeli acquaintance. Through their personal relationships they have changed their colleagues’ views about Ethiopian Israelis and their understanding of the experiences of racism. Moreover, the women journalists from Galatz were proud they managed to change a number of discriminating norms against Ethiopians in their organisation.

Conclusions

Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists experience structural inferiority that hinders or excludes them from integrating into the profession because of their racial identity. However, the development of diversity trends in the Israeli labour market (Sliter and King, 2014), as well as of diversity sensitivity in the news industry, has led to a change. It appears that especially since the 2015 and 2019 waves of Ethiopian-Israeli protest, news organisations are welcoming and sometimes even strive to integrate Ethiopian Israelis, although only as tokens. Surprisingly, the intersectionality of gender and racial identity of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists has paved their way into the profession. The attitude that Ethiopian-Israeli men are dangerous and violent gives priority to Ethiopian-Israeli women, who are seen as ‘cuties’ and ‘unthreatening’. Moreover, a perceived exotic Ethiopian feminine beauty increases Ethiopian-Israeli women’s chances of integrating into certain positions in news-making. This is most prominent in the visual media, where their black presence brands the news organisation as committed to diversity. In the current climate of enhancing Ethiopian protest voices against racism in the Israeli public sphere, a black feminine face helps the newsrooms to strategically ‘manage diversity’ (Ahmed, 2007).

Still, Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists struggle with stereotypical reactions to their presence in their professional sphere. They often feel like the ‘other’ in the newsroom, especially at the beginning of their careers. The current study cannot prove an increased pace of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists leaving the profession; however, it indicated two factors that urge them to depart that derive from their unique positioning. The first is the economic insecurity of a career in journalism, which Ethiopian immigrants find especially problematic. The second is the continuous status of being a token, which the Ethiopians reject.

However, the picture I found through my interviews is much more complex. Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists also experience a unique strength in their work, as some use their perceived social inferiority to manoeuvre relationships with sources to benefit their own needs. Moreover, a prominent aspect in their work experience is their advocacy role, as they strive to change stereotypical news representations of Ethiopian Israelis. In contrast, phenomenological studies on hegemonic women journalists, including Israelis, often emphasize women experiencing a working environment dominated by masculine norms. These studies usually focus on occupational segregation in roles and missions, work-family conflict, and sexual harassment within newsrooms and by sources (e.g. Byerly and Padovani, 2017; Lachover and Lemish, 2018). But the Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists interviewed only paid minor attention to these gendered barriers, as their perceived work experience was mostly influenced by the intersection of their racial and gendered positioning.

This difference between hegemonic and non-hegemonic women journalists in their work experience reaffirms the recent call to study minority journalists based on different axes of identity: gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion (Meyers and Gayle, 2015; Steiner, 2012). While there is no unequivocal argument about how women and minorities influence patterns of news content, scholarship in news sociology sees a dialectic interplay between the individual and social structure in news production (Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). These studies characterize news people through a variety of variables, but they ignore the intersectional approach. The findings of the current paper echo the call of Hill Collins and Bilge (2016) to study intersectionality in institutional sites of cultural production, such as mass media (p. 198) – an area that has received little attention so far. Moreover, my findings demonstrate how intersectional position can serve as both a barrier and an agency in minorities’ work experience.

The centrality of the advocacy role in the work experience of Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists indicates that their professional work in mainstream Israeli journalism allows them to criticize racism in Israeli society. Unlike more common routes of Ethiopian-Israeli protest (e.g. street demonstrations, which often include violent confrontations with the police), activism through mainstream journalism is socially perceived as a more constructive protest strategy. Performing their protest through professional identity, and more specifically journalistic work, echoes the idea of ‘critical belonging’ – an analytical tool put forward by immigration scholars. Critical belonging relates to a variety of new modes developed by immigrants to position themselves in the new society while criticising it. This critique often enables immigrants to express their belonging (Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, 2012). I argue that working in the mainstream news organisations provides Israeli-Ethiopian women journalists with an efficient tool to link their black Ethiopian identity with their Israeli identity, allowing an immigrant positioning of dual belonging – of acceptance and opposition.

Further newsrooms research from the theoretical perspective of intersection should include other marginalized minority women journalists: analysing how each group’s identity and relations with the hegemonic group influence the group’s professional identity. For the Ethiopian-Israeli women journalists who strive to integrate into Israeli society, their professional journalistic identity might contribute to what seems like their assimilation. This is not necessarily the case with other social minorities groups working in mainstream news media who are outside the Zionist project, such as Arab-Israeli journalists (Lamont et al., 2016) or ultra-Orthodox journalists, who separate themselves from the world outside of their communities. These might experience their unique values differently in the context of practising journalism.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the women journalists who participated in the research for their openness and trust. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers for their attentive read and insightful comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [grant number 1075/20].

ORCID iD

Einat Lachover

Notes

Author biography

Einat Lachover (PhD Tel-Aviv University, 2003) is an associate professor at Sapir Academic College. Her work is dedicated to critical analysis of the encounters between gender and a broad range of media forms and contexts, such as: gender construction of news production; gendered discourse in news media; gender ideologies in popular media; and girlhood and media. She also researches questions related to cultural discourse, memory, and national identity.

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