Real women - the hidden sex

1. INTRODUCTION

We began this research with the understanding that there are more men than women in public life; that women transgressing accepted social and moral codes are deemed more 'newsworthy' than male transgressors and that a premium is placed on a woman's appearance in industries such as show business and advertising.

However, overwhelming findings from our study show that photographic images of women in newspapers are out of step with real women's lives.

More women work now than ever before, more women are making an impact - at all levels up to and including the boardroom - and there are more women MPs. But how well is this reflected by the newspapers they read each day? Our analysis of the editorial pages of nine national newspapers indicates many papers could better express this diversity.

The findings, from an analysis conducted by advertising agency Publicis' Trends Group for Women in Journalism, show that photographic images of men dramatically outnumber those of women. And that while the men featured in photographs are more likely to be 'professionals' and politicians, the women are more likely to be actresses, models and other 'celebrities'.

We also found that while women increasingly feature on the front pages and masthead marketing 'puffs' of national newspapers, the rate at which more women are making it onto the front page is not matched by what's happening inside. Newspapers are making a greater effort to appeal to women readers by using more women's images to 'sell' themselves, yet the approach they take to using photographs of women throughout the rest of their pages is inconsistent with this apparent 'women-friendly' approach.

But even taking all this into account, our research shows that the way newspapers use images of women is at best old-fashioned, at worst complacent.

Women working on national newspapers confront this issue on almost a daily basis. Many report regular discussions concerning the selection of images of women. But while male executives are more eager to use more images of women, the motivation behind this - and criteria used in selecting these images - can be questionable.

Efforts to 'bump up' the number of women featured on the front page, for example, risk being little more than tokenism - unless the image is relevant and the prominence it is given is in line with the prominence of the story relating to that image in subsequent pages. Selection and prominence of images often comes down to subjective judgements on what makes the 'better' story. For example, is it more 'newsworthy' that a couple made love on a transatlantic flight, or that one of the people involved was a woman?

These are questions that should be the subject of open debate. At a time when newspapers face increasing competition - and when overall newspaper readership is in decline - newspapers are fighting to attract and retain readers, especially women. There is, surely, a business case to be argued for national newspapers more accurately and realistically to represent real women's situations and experiences.

The use of photographs of women in newspapers is not a black and white issue. But Women in Journalism believes the time is right for a debate within the industry about how women are depicted. This research, we believe, lays the foundation. On the following pages, we publish details of the Publicis findings and our own qualitative survey of picture editors' responses.