Civ1 savage carolyn

“Is there Equality?”
Prepared by: Carolyn Savage
BPW NZ Immediate Past President
BPW International Congress May 2014

BPW NZ IPP, May 2014
Media – how does it look today?
 Media and Gender Equality – in the
workforce
 Media – how women are portrayed in
the public arena?
 What are the success stories?
 How can BPW make a difference?

Gender Equality – is it in the workplace?
 During the 1990’s the lead reporters of the day were
 white middle aged males
 20 years on
 male reporters account for 63% of the bylines in the
country’s top 10 newspapers
 almost the same proportion in newsrooms.
(Extract from The Media has a Woman Problem: The New York Times,
Sunday Review, by Liza Mundy, 26 April 2014)

Why Media – has a woman problem?
 Men dominate the prestige or ‘hard’ topics
 Politics and Crime,
 Business and Technology,
 World Affairs and SPORTS!
 Women higher in the ‘soft’ subjects
 Education and Lifestyle,
 Culture and Health
 and FASHION!
(Extract from The Media has a Woman Problem: The New York Times, Sunday Review, by Liza
Mundy, 26 April 2014)

How Are Women – Represented?
 How they look, their haircuts, they way they
speak.
 If they are married, have children and what are
they like as mothers.
 How many women are on their team.
 What type of clothing or colour they were
wearing on the day.

Media – the power of language
 Reporters have used similar language but at
times with different twists/meanings to:
 Acknowledge male politicians
 Undermine strong women leaders
 The following are some examples of strong
women who the media haven’t ensured gender
equality…..

High Profile Women

Media - Baroness Margaret Thatcher, 1st Women Prime
Minister – United Kingdom, 1979-1990
 Not an easy road…. a legacy of the “Iron Maiden and
Thatcherism’
 Her brand of women’s rights — the right to compete, fight,
and succeed on equal terms with men — did not fit the
fashionable orthodoxies of Left-wing feminism. She wasn’t
interested in banning, separating, promoting, or defining:
she was interested in winning.
 1970….Each time Thatcher entered the Commons, Labour
MPs chanted ‘ditch the bitch’.
 Protestors outside Downing Street sang ‘ding dong, the
witch is dead’ when Thatcher resigned in 1990. To some,
she remains the wicked witch — the single greatest insult
to feminism.
Extract from: Why The Iron Lady was the ultimate women's libber: Amanda Forman, 2012. Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2085368/Margaret-Thatcher-The-Iron-Lady-ultimate-womens-libber.html#ixzz32PiwzomG )

The Rt Hon. Dame Jenny Shipley - 1st NZ
Woman Prime Minister, 1997-1999
 Controversial headlines:
 topples Prime Minister Jim Bolger,
 constructive coup, to remove Prime Minister, while out of the
country.
 was reported as being the ‘most hated person in NZ’ over tax
cuts
 Often ‘pictured’ as a rugby player or coach in editorial cartoons
 related to her physical appearance and image of ordinariness
 language of war, games and competition.
 Was reported as a conservative ‘tax-cutter’ who reduced social
welfare programs
 Was referred to as ‘the toughest man in cabinet’.

Hon Helen Clark - 1st NZ Elected Woman Prime
Minister, 1999-2008
 Some media reports:
 “…..He was raw and new as hell and you felt
for him every time he went up against the
dark force of Helen Clark. Yet he beat her.”
(Extract from: Paul Holmes: Same old, same old won't do it for Labour, 3 Dec
2011)
 “It's worth noting that when Helen Clark was
Prime Minister she was the subject of vile
smears over her sexuality; some of the most
hateful coming from her own side of politics
who were angry that a woman had achieved the
top political heights in New Zealand.”
(Extract from: Fran O'Sullivan: Men's room talk no excuse this time round, 9
Nov 2013)

Differing
Images
Male Political Leaders Hon Helen Clark, 1st
Female Elected Prime
Minister of NZ
Number of
same sex
support
staff
Considered part of the
norm…. Formed the
political ‘wallpaper’
Continual media attacks of
lesbianism, both towards
her personally, friends,
colleagues and staff. One
common thread the ‘lesbian
mafia’….
Use of
language,
male
considered
positive,
female
negative
Reports said Hon Robert
Muldoon, “rode the
international wave of male
empowerment that had
dominated the previous
30 centuries”
One reporter had written
“Clark had very successfully
ridden the "international
wave of female
empowerment that has
dominated the last 30
years".

Differing
Images
Male Political Leaders Hon Helen Clark, 1st
Female Elected Prime
Minister of NZ
Home life
and
appearance
Michael Joseph Savage:
• a well loved former
Prime Minister,
• never married,
• never had a serious
relationship with a
woman
• lived as a boarder with
an elderly couple
throughout his
premiership.
Never considered an issue
then or now
During her term:
• was forced to marry her
partner of 5 years,
against her belief on
marriage
• continuous stream of
innuendo aimed not just
at her but at her husband
too,
• continual scrutiny of her
appearance, hairstyle,
clothing and wardrobe
stylists during her term.

Hillary Clinton – Secretary of State,
 Is recognized as one of the most influential
women in the world….
 “Her policies and hard stance with world
leaders is enough to get the world buzzing….”
 But, what about her hairdos?
 A new short polished do on Hillary Clinton has
rekindled rumours of a 2016 presidential run.
 Clinton’s chopped locks could be a sign that
she’s trying to further polish her image ahead of
2016 White House bid…..”
(Extract from: DailyNews 7/9/2013)

Media – Julia Gillard, 1st Woman Prime Minister Australia
 Julia Gillard: 'I didn’t know my misogyny speech would reverberate
around the world’
 “Julia Gillard, Australia’s first woman prime minister, was
pilloried for being female, unmarried and childless
 Since she was deposed last year, she has remained largely silent,
aside from writing an essay in which she confessed that losing
power “hits you like a fist”.
 Even that blow seems slight compared with the pummelling she
took in office. Her hair, her accent and her unmarried state were
derided by opponents, who put up “ditch the witch” posters.
 One interviewer was critical of her partner, who is a hairdresser,
and an adversary accused her of being “deliberately barren”
because she had decided not to have children….”
(Extract from: The Telegraph, section Home, Women, Women Politics, article by Mary
Riddell, 21 May 2014)

Reporting – If it goes wrong who’s name is reported
most?
 When Mainzeal – Property and Construction
collapses….who of the three directors who had
resigned took the prime headlines…..
 “Mainzeal Group is not in receivership, but its independent directors,
former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley, Paul Collins and Clive
Tilby resigned this week.
(extract from Directors blame credit problems and BNZ; National Business
Review | Friday February 08, 2013)

Media Backlash – The Company Director takes
second place to Dame Jenny Shipley….
 “Richard Yan, the Harvard-educated Chinese businessman at
the centre of the Mainzeal Property and Construction collapse,
has thrown up a wall of silence around the building firm's
failure.
 When I hear things like Jenny Shipley and all these people that
were directors of this company resigned the night before - that
really gets up my craw," he said.
 Dame Jenny and fellow directors Paul Collins and Clive Tilby
resigned from Mainzeal's parent company on Tuesday, after
being asked to shift from the construction company's board in
December.”
(extract: Mainzeal Director Silent on Firm’s Failure: BusinessDay, Stuff.co.nz 8/2/2013)

ASSURANCES: Jenny Shipley faced questions from
Labour MP Clayton Cosgrove over her connection to Mainzeal.
 “Former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley
ducked questions about her role in failed
construction company Mainzeal, as she faced MPs
in her capacity of chairman of Genesis Energy.
 Dame Jenny was the independent chairman of
Mainzeal until she quit just weeks before it
collapsed when its major shareholder withdrew its
support, leading to 200 job losses.”
(Extract: Shipley Ducks Mainzeal Questions: BusinessDay,
Stuff.co.nz 7/3/2013)

Media - using a voice in 2005
 “Talkback host John Tamihere claimed it was all
just a matter of "West Auckland men's room
talk" when he got into trouble for labelling
Labour's female MPs "front-bums" back in
2005.
 "It was just two blokes kicking a ball around at
lunch," was how Tamihere tried to explain away
the outrageous slurs against his female Labour
colleagues…..” (Extract: Men’s Room Talk No Excuse….etl)

Media – using a voice 2013
 Eight years later Tamihere and his fellow RadioLive host and former Alliance MP
Willie Jackson illustrated their Neanderthal attitudes when they interviewed a
young woman on the Roast Busters case.
 They made deeply insensitive and hurtful comments during their interview with a
young courageous 18 year old, named “Amy”
 she spoke out against the "Roast Busters" Facebook bully boys –
 the self-proclaimed stupefies of teenage girls and self-proclaimed proud rapists
–
 who had bragged about their sexual exploits with drunken young girls as young
as 13.
 Their attitude reinforced what is still deeply prevalent in some circles which says
girls ask for it.
 Due to the article the:
 show's advertisers pulled their brand advertising as a protest against the comments
 and ‘RadioLive's MediaWorks owners deleted the recording from their website.
(Extract from: Fran O'Sullivan: Men's Room Talk No Excuse This Time Round, 9 Nov 2013)

The Success Stories
With Women Reporters:
Number of women
quoted increased
With Male Reporters:
Men quoted 3x more
than women

Media - the change in messages for women
 10 TED Talks you need to see, by Marilynn McLachlan Friday Mar 21, 2014
Top 10 you don’t want to miss:….
 Helen Clark - Women and Leadership (August 2013)
 Former New Zealand Prime Minister and Administrator of the
United Nations Development Programme, Helen Clark,
discusses the lack of women in leadership around the world.
 She also goes into the consequences for society when women
are not involved in government goals and laws.
 In this powerful talk, she chats about access to reproductive
health care, clean water and food production.
(www.nzherald.co.nz/news/article.cfm?c)

Success Stories – Women on Boards – front line
news
 Research published in local papers: e.g. Harvard
Business School….find striking variances between
the gender profiles of directors
 The gender gap
 7.5 percentage of female directors on NZ boards
 Of those
 88% of women had advanced degrees compared to
45% of men
 56% of women were married compared to 84% of
men
 72% of women had children compared to 90% of men

Front-line news: continues….
 Degrees of difference on boards
 However, almost twice as many women directors as men had advanced degrees
- 88 per cent of women and 45 per cent of men.
 "These differences raise the question: might there be a greater cost paid and
higher qualification needed by women to reach the same level of career
achievement as their male colleagues?“
 New Zealand women directors were found to serve on the same number of
boards as men during their board career but women were currently serving on
more boards.
 They were also less likely to have a leadership position such as chair, although
some women such as Mighty River Power chair Joan Withers and soon to be
listed Genesis Energy chair Dame Jenny Shipley have made it through to the
top ranks
On the web
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/women-on-boards-another-year-another-disappointment/
- NZ Herald

Front-line news: continues….
 Young mum of three bucks the trend
 Abby Foote bucks the trend for female directors in New Zealand -
she is married, has three children and at 42 is one of the youngest
directors on a publicly listed company.
 Abby Foote is on four professional boards and is also chair of her
local school board.
 "In the past it was people who had long and colourful careers as a
CEO of a business and then, when they retired, became a director.
Women who fell into that category have had to make some
sacrifices."
 Foote, who joined the board of Z Energy last year, says the low
marriage and motherhood rate of women directors in New Zealand
may be down to the path traditionally taken to get into
directorships.
(Extract from: Degrees of Difference on Boards, by Tamsyn Parker, 10 Feb 2014)
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/women-on-boards-another-year-another-disappointment/
- NZ Herald

BPW - how can we make a difference
 Preparing and issuing press releases, within 24
hours on key events affecting women
 Provide success stories where:
 Women are making a difference
 Women have obtained new board positions
 Acknowledging Women’s Empowerment
Principle (WEP’s) signatories success.
 Issuing press releases when being a speaker at
select hearings
 Engage closely with key media personnel, who
have an interest in your stories.

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