National convenor of Women in Media Tracey Spicer.
The MEAA's Women in Media report has been released, and it isn't pretty.
The survey conducted by Women in Media – an advocacy group supported by the MEAA – desribes the Australian media as a a blokey culture that rewards mates over merit, tolerates sexual harassment, pays lip service to work-family balance, and perpetuates the gender pay gap.
The survey was developed by the national steering committee of Women in Media and researcher Beverley Uther, and conducted by iSentia.
It collected data from 1054 Australian journalists between September and December 2015, with 91.8 percent of the respondents being women.
Forty one percent of respondents to the survey said they’d been harassed, bullied or trolled on social media.
Almost half (48 percent) said they’d experienced intimidation, abuse or sexual harassment in the workplace.
One in three (34 percent) said they didn’t feel confident to speak up about discrimination.
The survey also indicates an entrenched gender pay gap (reinforced by research from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency of a 23.3 percent gap in the sector).
“Progress towards equality for women in media is disappointingly slow,” national convenor of Women in Media Tracey Spicer said.
“While there are more women than ever before working in the industry, they still dominate the lower paid, less powerful positions.”
“The media is often called a mirror of society. But it is failing to reflect our diversity.”
Director of MEAA’s Media section Katelin McInerney said the union would use these findings to work with media employers to “fully harness the incredible potential of their female workforce”.
Measures include audits on the gender pay gap; improved procedures to deal with social media harassment; and anti-discrimination policies to be put into practice.
“Outdated attitudes and ineffective policies are holding women back from making their fullest and most creative contribution to the media landscape, at a time when innovation, diversity and new ways of thinking are desperately needed to help our industry transition and meet the challenges of a new digital era,” McInerney said.
“While we have secured some improvements, media companies have been slow to adopt pay transparency, superannuation during parental leave, and dedicated family violence leave.”
The full survey is available here: womeninmedia.net