Look Who’s (Not) Talking

Women, despite representing more than half of the U.S. population, are used as sources in media stories, on average, only 33 percent of the time, according to a report released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The worse culprits were cable television at 19 percent and the PBS “News Hour” at 17 percent. Newspapers, with the best rate, still only quoted women 41 percent of the time.

I’ve heard too often (from men and women) that gender inequality doesn’t exist anymore. After an uproar last month that the number of female op/ed columnists was woefully low, this should now be considered a trend we can’t ignore.

So next time you read that newspaper article, watch that news show on television or read reporting on the internet, notice whether women were quoted. Was it as often as men? Were their contributions significant or used tangentially?

And if you’re a woman, I beg you, ask yourself if your opinion has been heard recently. Because we’ve got to speak up to be heard. This isn’t about getting “women’s issues” on the table. Every issue is a woman’s issue the minute one woman cares about it. This is about ensuring female comments are valued just as much as a male’s.