Male v Female experts.

When you are an expert in your space your gender should not be an issue when communicating with the media, but there is quite the discrepancy when it comes to male and female representation. There is an abundance of men, but women are few and far between and the research by our guest on this episode of the Experts Podcast is looking to address this issue and how we might turn that around.

Dr Kathryn Shine is the Journalism Postgraduate Course Coordinator at Curtin University.   Her research is across 30 female academics detailing their experiences and challenges of working with the media. The findings were very consistent with those that Media Stable have documented for both men and women. Some of the big hurdles for women working in media include fear of the media, fear of other colleagues, time restrictions, less inclined to put hand up and a gender bias media. The ultimate challenge though appears to be a lack of relationship with the media.

A big portion of this podcast talks about the challenges that women face when dealing with media, mainly confidence. Understanding the media cycle would be highly beneficial for those that have overwhelmingly said they are prepared to do media but cannot get breakthrough or recognition for their expertise. On the other side we look at media and what they can be doing to encourage new sources and what it can add to their audience. There is a high portion of female audience that are disengaged with the news cycle because it does not represent a female view. Here is an opportunity to grow real audience numbers.

Media Stable was able to give some interesting statistics on male and female representation on our Media Board and the dominance that female experts are having over men. Dr Kathryn was surprised but also noted when supported with media training and other support it does make a difference to achieve this. There is no doubt that both the media and the experts need to address the numbers.

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