The federal constitutional mandate for equality (Art. 8(3) Federal Constitution) requires both legal and actual equality between women and men, particularly in the areas of family, education, and work. The requirement of equal pay for work of equal value is also explicitly enshrined. The Federal Act on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (Equal Opportunities Act, GlG 2020) puts the equality article into concrete terms and aims to promote actual equality in working life. It prohibits all discrimination on the basis of gender and for the entire duration of employment in both the private and public sectors.
In our study, none of the five female journalists complained about discrimination. Individually, they all asserted themselves and achieved their goals, despite all male-dominated networks. However, the editor-in-chief of public broadcasting in German-speaking Switzerland sees the following difficulties: “Where a woman sits down, a man goes. Women must “be better” and be willing to take responsibility”.
Although the will to promote female media workers is present in the leading publishing houses, only the public broadcaster SRG SSR has concrete measures and ambitious plans. “We want 50 per cent women. We will achieve this in the next five years”, the editor-in-chief said. All media, not just the tabloid Blick, have “a women’s problem”. The publishing house Ringier has, therefore, launched an initiative “EqualVoice”, with four main goals. “We let more women have their say, we make strong women visible, we make children and careers compatible, and we want more female journalists in the newsrooms” (Blick, 2019). Specifically, project teams are to be put together in each editorial office of the group in order to implement this in the daily work of the newsrooms.
The efforts described are more than justified, if one consults the relevant literature. In 2015, 39 per cent of journalists who took part in the survey were women (Dingerkus et al., 2018). In comparison with previous studies, the proportion of female journalists in Switzerland has continued to increase over the years. In 1980, the proportion of female journalists in the two regions covered by this study was 17 per cent. In 1998, their share rose to 32 per cent and in 2008 to 35 per cent (Keel, 2011). However, in the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) study, which was conducted almost simultaneously, the authors conclude that the proportion of women among media professionals has fallen by around 5 per cent compared with 2010 and still amounts to just under 30 per cent (GMMP, 2015). But there is still something like male dominance in the newsrooms of leading publishing houses. About 69 per cent of all newspaper journalists are men, and three out of four management positions in the Swiss media industry are occupied by men. On average, women earn CHF 700 less than men for the same work experience; in management positions, the monthly wage difference averages CHF 1,400. In the editorial departments of the daily news, politics, and business, the proportion of female journalists is around 30 per cent, while more than two-thirds of the news written are written by men. This proportion has increased compared with 2010 (GMMP, 2015).
Furthermore, the proportion of women in radio and television is higher than in newspapers, namely 46 versus 38 per cent. An above-average number of female journalists work in the low-paid online sector. As far as academic education is concerned, three of four women have a university degree, while only two of three men have an academic education (Hanitzsch et al., 2019).
In Hanitzsch and colleagues’ most recent publication (2019), these male authors come to a contradictory conclusion. Female journalists – who make up the majority of the new generation of journalists and start out better educated and enter the profession faster – are still underrepresented in newsrooms. On average, only four of ten media workers are female, and they are over-represented in those departments that tend to be lower in the editorial hierarchy (e.g., education, science, service, lifestyle, health, and religion). Not only do women journalists have fewer opportunities for advancement than men, they also earn less when they take on leadership positions. However, many of them are lost to journalism because they leave the profession due to domestic responsibilities and are unable or unwilling to return to work, either full-time or part-time. Only a minority of women are willing or able to take up leading positions in editorial departments.
In connection with the national women’s strike in Switzerland in 2019, young women working in the media sector articulated five demands: first, more women in leadership positions, more gender justice, and thus more journalistic power; second, equal pay; third, better flexibility for taking care of family and career; fourth, protection against harassment; and fifth, no sexism in reporting.
On the basis of the responses of four male editors-in-chief and the female editor-in-chief of tabloid online-news platform blick.ch, whose responses were collected and presented by the media platform persönlich.com (Widmer, 2020), it can be stated that the demands made, in their deliberately abstract form, are accepted by all editorial heads. (Which editor-in-chief can seriously imagine campaigning for poorer wages for even fewer women and for the incompatibility of work and family life?) Equal pay, protection against harassment in the workplace, and the compatibility of family and career seem to be well on the way, while the editor-in-chief’s editorial team is quickly reaching its limits in terms of argumentation in fulfilling the first and last demands. Without concretising company-specific objectives and making promises, all editors-in-chief are trying to put their own efforts to date in perspective and promise improvement on a case-by-case basis.
Arthur Rutishauser, editor-in-chief of Tamedia Publication in German-speaking Switzerland, promised improvement: “The proportion of women in management is still only 30 per cent in the newsrooms. We must clearly improve”. Relatively helplessly, the respective editorial heads are confronted with the rather cursory representation of women in the media. Pascal Hollenstein, journalistic director of the CH Media Group, is at least reasonable: “We are aware that it is more difficult to find a female audience for products that are heavily male-oriented. Under these circumstances, how should – and at best, how can – the visibility of women in reporting be increased?”
A survey conducted by the magazine Edito (1/20) of the Professional Association of Media Professionals and the Media Trade Union revealed that selected newsrooms of leading media have 16–38 per cent women in management positions. The NZZ is at the lower end, while the NZZ am Sonntag from the same publishing house is at the top. The largest commuter newspaper in Switzerland, 20Minuten, has a 33 per cent share of women in management positions and a 47 per cent share in editorial positions. In the politics and business editorial department of SRF, the proportion of women in management is 28 per cent and in the editorial department as a whole 38 per cent.
Last year, Nora Bader and Andrea Fopp interviewed female journalists and asked them the following question, among others: “Does gender play a role in their professional lives?” The majority of the women interviewed stood by the spoken word, but a few completely rewrote the text or withdrew from the interview shortly before publication – probably for fear they would ruin their reputation in the media industry if they spoke plainly (Bader & Fopp, 2020: 19). In their book, they published 15 interviews, and in their introduction, they drew a conclusion under the title “Welcome to the shark tank”:
We have drawn the following conclusions: newsrooms are places of power struggle. Men are constantly fighting over who is the boss or the silverback in the pack. Accordingly, editorial meetings are rarely about who has the best ideas or does the most careful research, but rather about who roars the loudest, because the impostor syndrome is particularly widespread in journalism. As a woman, every now and then you feel compelled to shout: “Hey, buddy, if you want war, let’s make war!” (Susan Boos)
A latent sexism, especially disparaging slogans and abusive touches, apparently belong to the media industry. Tamedia journalists found out in a survey in 2019 that half of the 458 female journalists who responded had already experienced sexual harassment and assaults from work colleagues or interview partners at work – for men, the figure was 11 per cent. If a woman defends herself against such “work culture”, she is quickly considered hysterical, humourless, or bitchy, and her promotion is a long way off. As a woman, one should not be “too sensitive” or make “politically incorrect” remarks. This is obviously also part of newsroom culture.
Where promotion is important, men are clearly in the majority. Around 70 per cent of political and business journalists are male; these hardcore departments are the powerhouse of journalism, with their topics considered the most relevant and their journalists the most competent and ambitious. Publishers also like to give editor-in-chief positions to well-connected political and business journalists. From an experienced domestic editor of Weltwoche – a woman – this means: “Come on – what are you waiting for? Why don’t you write about finance, social security, and armaments policy and don’t let yourself be pushed into the lifestyle league!”
When it comes to overcoming unequal power relations, only a few of the few successful media women plead for structural reforms in the fight against manifest and latent discrimination. One of them is Susan Boos, a long-standing member of the chief editorial staff of the weekly WOZ: “It can’t be right that women should simply have to adapt to male structures. Our lifetime is too good for that” (Bader & Fopp, 2020: 28). Patrizia Laeri of the SRF business editorial team also criticised the structural conditions. “The incentives in the workplace are wrongly set” (Bader & Fopp, 2020: 28). She complained that working hours in the hard-core departments of politics and business are often particularly unfriendly to families. Even if it is not only about equal career opportunities, but also about diverse reporting, this includes topics that deal with women and primarily affect women.
Although most publishing houses and public broadcasters make efforts to achieve equality in newsrooms, the media industry and their trade associations are ultimately rather indifferent to gender equality and equal career opportunities. The disinterest of publishing houses and media politics is still so pronounced that reliable and comparable figures on the listed demands of media women are still missing.
