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Are We There Yet? Women Inequality and Media with Anne O’Brien

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Women Inequality and Media Work

Women’s Voices and women’s stories are still  not getting aired at the same rate as mens. This is what comes through in Dr Anne O’Brien’s new book ‘Women Inequality and Media Work’. Women only get a small percentage of airtime according to Dr O’Brien.  “Globally women get about the mid-twenty percent airtime across radio and television and according to the psychology literature, if women speak for more than 30% of the time, they are seen as dominating.  “In her research for the book, Dr O’Brien talked to women in production roles, and also to presenters on air on radio and television. Despite the #metoo movement and #wakingthefeminists and various government initiatives and gender audits, there is still much work to be done to level the landscape for women working in media in Ireland, both in front of and behind the cameras and microphones.

Women who work in media and film in Ireland still often have to negotiate their credit even though they have done the work even when it is agreed in advance. “They have to negotiate their rate, they are often not paid the same rate as the men doing the same job when working freelance,” Dr O’Brien discovered.

Undervaluing Caring On Set

In her research she interviewed many women working in production in Ireland and what she discovered was the undervaluing of women’s caring skills in making productions flow seamlessly. “There was an expectation that women would not just ‘look a certain way’, but that they would ‘behave’ in  a certain way. A lot of that is around care work, emotional work, making sure that everyone on the team was getting along, if there was a row that the women would patch it up. If someone was having a bad day that the women would soothe them and that they would basically grease the relational wheels of production all the time, but that was never taken seriously as work, it wasn’t taken seriously as a skill.”

Putting a financial value on those skills would be a start in redressing this.  “A lot of the skill, emotional intelligence and collaborative capacity that women have, that they bring to work, gets made invisible as something that ‘comes naturally’ to us.  It is not valued it is not even seen it is not visible so it is not rewarded it is not part of the formal workload or job description but it is still very much expected, yet if women don’t do that work they get a pushback from that.”

One woman starting out in the industry expressed a clear desire to be a director and yet she was not shown new equipment when it arrived. She was always steered toward the support work, production managing, production co-ordination, the minding of teams and that is a strong pattern we see in the media in Ireland Dr O’Brien believes. “Men still tend to dominate in technical roles in roles that would lead to directing. Women directors say that they face the gender bias when it comes to telling mens stories, whereas men claim to be able to tell women’s stories all the time.” Women say they had to prove that they could tell men’s stories even when they were not about soft and fluffy topics.

Dr Anne O’Brien is a lecturer in Maynooth University in the Department of Media Studies and coordinates the audio-visual production modules. Her research focuses on gender and creative industries, women’s production work and representations of women in Irish broadcasting.

Dr Anne O’Brien’s Top 5 Leadership Advice Pearls

  1. You Don’t Need To Be Perfect Sometimes we look at the role and think oh god how would I ever be able to do it that? Then you think about some average man who is doing the role and ask yourself well could I do it that well. There is a huge pressure on women to be perfectionist about things and to have proven those skills before we go for it.
  2. Chance Your Arm Pushback is inevitable. I think we have to get a little bit better at chancing our arms and then when there is a backlash and we are punished we should move past it and see it for what it is, that you are trying to take power, you are trying to own your own power and there will always be a pushback to that.
  3. Stay In The Room If we can de personalise those things, stay with it, stay in the room and keep engaging with it that’s really important.
  4. You Are Not Alone. There is a need for collective action to bring about change. It is not up to individual women to take this on and change the world. The only way we are going to change the world is by working collectively.  That is what was so interesting about the #wakingthe feminists movement. It was a collection of women, a very spontaneous but very well understood and a very clear agenda for what was wrong and for what needed to change and how that needed to change.
  5. It is not your fault. I think women need to refind that sensibility about wanting change. We saw it brilliantly with the repeal movement last year. When women get an idea about wanting change they can generate it. But the key to doing it, is doing it collectively and to not internalise these things as your personal problem to be solved.

Go To Song

Dr. Anne O’Brien’s Go To Song  is Forrest by The Cure. It is just great imagery to get lost in.

Women Inequality and Media Work Published by Routledge

Thanks to our Podcast Sponsor is IITD

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Gillian Harford on AIB Equality Initiatives

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Gillian Harford of AIB on Diversity Initiatives

Gillian Harford heads up human resources planning and strategy in AIB and this is an exciting week for her as several initiatives she has been working on to improve equality and fairness in the bank are launched.

Top of the list is two weeks paid paternity leave for their staff both in Ireland and in the UK.  They are opening this to same sex couples who become new parents too.  Gillian says “this is not just for dads we are gender blind.”

Minding The Gap for women on maternity leave is an initiative that they have been working on for some time now and it is being very well received by staff.

“If you think about it now women can be gone for up to a year so coming back after a length of time can be really daunting. Male leaders can be afraid of saying the wrong thing and even male leaders say it is nothing they can identify with.”

They provide access to email for those who want to keep in touch but this is not obligatory. They will also be providing three paid Keep In Touch days -like they have in the UK already- to allow for phased reintroduction to the workplace.

Managers also receive training in ‘having the conversation’ with women staff members who are going on maternity leave or who may be returning after maternity leave about how they would like to be communicated with during their leave.  “We talk to line managers and they are so afraid of saying the wrong things, afraid to talk when they are leaving and afraid when they were coming back so we encourage them to have the conversation.”

Greater diversity on boards and in senior leadership teams is essential for any organisation Gillian believes and this is true for financial institutions too. They have a target of 40% in their senior leadership teams.

AIB plans to have 40 per cent women across management by 2018 and they have already achieved their target of 25% representation of women on the AIB Group board since the end of 2016.

“If you look at some of the research that has come out from the financial crisis one of the key messages from financial crisis that keeps coming through is that boards and senior executive teams were all made up of like minded individuals with very similar backgrounds, similar personal characteristics and very similar experiences and that can lead to group think. So you will see that professional bodies, regulators talking about the need for diversity, the need for balance as a risk mitigant as well as being a supporting element in terms of real customer service and stability for the future.”

5 Pearls of Wisdom

From her own life experience and thirty years as a leader in human resources Gillian shares her top tips for career and for life in the podcast.

  1. Mind Your Energy If your emotional energy is strong you will thrive. As homemakers and minders we tend to put ourselves last but sometimes we should put ourselves first.
  2. Networking Is Essential not a perk and women do not always see the value so do some networking. Do it with purpose and don’t see it as a waste of time.
  3. Parachutes Are Fantastic inventions we all have them but as women we don’t always use them. And we don’t always let other people catch us when we think we are going to fall. Sometimes when you let go in a crisis others will jump in and support you as you have done for them in the past.
  4. Know Your Own Worth and protect it. We need to know and we need to think about our pensions, to think about our jobs, we need to think about putting ourselves forward and not being afraid to sell ourselves every now and again. It is not about looking for promotion or money, it’s about really recognizing our worth and our value.
  5. Be Brave We should try something brave every now and again, whether that is going for a new job, or looking at some further education, testing a new company doing something outside of our comfort zone. We can be so successful when we have confidence in ourselves and we just have to remind ourselves of that sometimes. We teach our daughters to be good and our sons to be brave. Maybe we might need to do vice versa sometimes. Don’t wait for somebody to tell you that you’re brilliant. If you are really good, then be confident in that and go out and show what you are worth.

The Women In Leadership podcast is copyright.