Muted Voices: The Underrepresentation of Women in COVID-19 News in Portugal

Araújo, Rita; Lopes, Felisbela; Magalhães, Olga; Cerqueira, Carla Preciosa Braga

doi:10.3390/socsci11050210

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Against this background, #systemrelevant connected multiple overlapping discourses around health care, working conditions, and gendered inequality: From private, unpaid care work and homeschooling to increased domestic violence against women during the lockdown-women's specific burdens became more visible. But women's representation and voice in coverage of the pandemic remained at low levels in Germany, like in many other countries (e.g., Araújo et al, 2022;Jones, 2020). It was mainly male experts who explained the burdens on women during the pandemic (Prommer et al, 2021).…”

Section: #Systemrelevant As a Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making (female) health care work matter

Reißmann

Siemon²,

Lünenborg³

et al. 2023

MedieKultur

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Over the last two years, digital media have contributed significantly to increasing the visibility of those who are outstandingly challenged by the pandemic. In Germany, the Twitter hashtag #systemrelevant [systemically relevant] initiated a public debate on values and working conditions. Applying the practice-theory-based concept of performative publics, we analyze the formation of this specific public with a special focus on its gendered structure. Results of our mixed-methods approach show how health care work has become the dominant issue of #systemrelevant. Civil society actors and engaged health care workers set the agenda, and journalism primarily responds to these voices. Although care work is performed predominantly by women, most of the attention online is given to men. However, on the level of tweets and linked content, the discourse in #systemrelevant counteracts stereotypical images of women in health care. Overall, the ethnographic data on the most significant collective actor show a continuous tension between symbolic recognition and their struggle for improving working conditions.

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Section: #Systemrelevant As a Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making (female) health care work matter

Reißmann

Siemon²,

Lünenborg³

et al. 2023

MedieKultur

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show abstract

“…Different than expected, this has not changed during the pandemic (Prommer & Stüwe, 2020). General findings on sourcing women as experts in pandemicrelated issues show continued underrepresentation in legacy (news) media (Araújo et al, 2022;Jones, 2020;Kassova et al, 2020). Macharia (2020, p. 35) reveals that less than a third of those represented as experts or commentators in Covid-19 news are female (29%), and almost half of the ones speaking out of personal experience are women (45%).…”

Section: Care Work Female Invisibility and Gendered Structures Of (So...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating Care Work: Gendered Network Structures of Pandemic Care Discourses on Twitter in Germany

Siemon

Reißmann²

2023

MaC

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Precarious conditions of care work are contested and deeply gendered issues all over the globe. The Covid-19 pandemic both intensifies the (national) care crises and makes care work more visible as a public issue. In this article, we ask for the opportunities, structural conditions, and limitations of voice and visibility in emerging publics beyond established media organizations. Applying the concept of performative publics and using social network analysis, we reconstruct and compare the constitution of publics around the two German language Twitter hashtags 0#systemrelevant and #CoronaEltern. In a comparative design, we ask which actor groups and what kind of genders gain visibility, and in which speaker positions women, men, and non-binary people appear. The comparison of the two case studies reveals rather different network structures and asks for more nuanced, issue-based “medium data” analyses in the linkage of gender media studies and computational methods. Whereas the public discourse on professional paid care work resembles gendered power structures, the public discourse on privatized, unpaid care work shows shifted patterns concerning female visibility. These findings are discussed critically as gendered discourse spaces of professional and privatized care work stay rather separated and thus risk reproducing traditional private/public boundaries. Furthermore, findings emphasize the importance of “invisible” relational work which keeps hashtags running. Ratios of paying attention from women to men and vice versa are unequally distributed. Females either invest more communicative effort than males or receive less attention for the equal amount of reaching out to others.

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“…Within science-related news coverage, there is often a dearth of female experts quoted as compared to their male counterparts (e.g. Araújo et al, 2022; Fletcher et al, 2021; Kitzinger et al, 2008; Niemi and Pitkänen, 2017). For example, Kitzinger et al (2008) examined gender representations within science-related news stories published in Britain over a 6-month period and concluded that males were cited at a much higher frequency.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When it comes to news media coverage of COVID-19 in general, furthermore, female researchers and healthcare workers are underrepresented in the news media (e.g. Araújo et al, 2022; Fletcher et al, 2021). Now, news media organizations, such as The New York Times , have recognized the gender gap within their quoted sources (Taub and Fisher, 2018) which has led to a mindful effort to include more female voices in their reporting.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The invisible frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining sourcing and the underrepresentation of female expertise in pandemic news coverage

Hubner

2023

Public Underst Sci

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Several studies have shown that female experts are seldom quoted within news media coverage about health and science issues. Yet, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent race for a vaccine, female health and science workers (broadly defined) were at the forefront of the discovery, testing, and implementation of several vaccinations. This study examines the extent to which female experts were represented in news coverage about the vaccine over a 2-year period in The New York Times ( n = 1978). Of the expert sources quoted (3,555), the majority were male ( n = 2417) as compared to female ( n = 1138). This pattern held when looking specifically at researchers and medical experts. When both a male and female source were quoted, however, females were quoted first, suggesting that females were given the role of being a primary rather than supporting expert. Implications and future directions are discussed.

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Muted Voices: The Underrepresentation of Women in COVID-19 News in Portugal

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

Making (female) health care work matter

Making (female) health care work matter

Negotiating Care Work: Gendered Network Structures of Pandemic Care Discourses on Twitter in Germany

The invisible frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining sourcing and the underrepresentation of female expertise in pandemic news coverage

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