Media Diversity Forum: Home

Chasing their star, on YouTube

Olga Kay, a rising YouTube star; Photo Credit: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

By Leslie Kaufman
(Feb. 1, 2014 | The New York Times) - It is 3 p.m., and outside another brilliant Los Angeles afternoon beckons. But Olga Kay has drawn her blinds, leaving her living room in a semidarkened haze.

She has been up since 8 a.m., though she is still in her pajamas and has ventured outside only briefly to walk her dog, Roxy. Otherwise, Ms. Kay sits cross-legged in front of a glowing screen, offering cheerful commentary as she navigates her way through the violent video game Grand Theft Auto 5.

The video game marathon is not a diversion — it is her job. Ms. Kay, 31, is part of an emerging group of entertainers who are trying to make a living by producing content for YouTube. Read more

Want to help women? Help men.

By Michael Kimmel
(Jan. 31, 2014 | The Shriver Report) - In her thoughtful op-ed in the New York Times, family historian Stephanie Coontz answered the question ”How Can we Help Men?” with a ringing endorsement of gender equality: “By Helping Women,” she answered. Read more

Teen girl petitions Disney to create plus-size princesses

By Prachi Gupta
(Jan. 31, 2014 | Salon.Com) - Farmville, Virginia high school student Jewel Moore has created a petition via Change.org asking the Walt Disney Animation Studios to create a “bright, amazing, and memorable” plus-size Disney princess to help improve the self-image of impressionable young girls. Read more

Obama’s State of the Union Address and Mad Men: Fact-checking the comparison

By Lily Rothman
(Jan. 29, 2014 | Time Entertainment) - The phrase #madmen was trending on Twitter last night (as MSNBC points out), but not because the show is back on the air. Instead, #madmen became about something much more than a TV show when President Barack Obama made reference to the 1960s-set drama during last night’s State of the Union address. The President mentioned the show in reference to ’60s-worthy workplace policies that “belong in a Mad Men episode” — policies that disadvantage women, whom he cited as making 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. Read more

Facebook's 'spotted' pages: everyday sexism in universities for all to see

By Laura Bates
(Jan. 31, 2014 | The Guardian) - These are the kind of comments that proliferate on university "Spotted" pages – Facebook pages encouraging students to write in with comments and messages about their peers, which are published anonymously by page administrators. Many of the pages target specific universities (each page supposedly run by a student at that institution), with hundreds of different pages appearing on Facebook. Many of the pages have been liked thousands of times. Read more

(En)Gendering greatness: Caught between Richard Sherman and a hard place

By Tikia K. Hamilton
(Jan. 31, 2014 | The Feminist Wire) - “I’m the shit!” You will probably never hear me utter these words, even though, on most days, I must quietly remind myself that I am. One of the reasons I would never mouth these words publicly is because, growing up as an African-American girl, my family always taught me the importance of humility. Read more

Republicans and the media flub their lines to women

By Ruth Marcus
(Jan. 28, 2013 | The Washington Post) - When it comes to dealing with women — in particular, when it comes to dealing with issues of women, power and sexuality — there is a surprising parallel between bumbling Republicans and bumbling media. Republicans have a hard time talking about women and sexuality. The media have difficulty talking about women and power. Both end up in trouble, in part because they are oblivious to the underlying discomfort that contributes to their offensive conduct or remarks. Read more

AP: 'Saturday Night Live' adds 2 black female writers after hiring black female cast member

(Jan. 9, 2014 | FoxNews.Com) - "Saturday Night" is expanding its ethnic diversity off-screen as well as on.

A network spokeswoman, Lauren Roseman, said Wednesday that NBC's comic institution is adding two black women to its writing staff.

The move follows the addition of an African-American woman, comedian Sasheer Zamata, to the show's cast. Read more

Hollywood movies with strong female roles make more money

(Jan. 2, 2014 | Vocativ.Com) - Dear Hollywood: We know how you can make more money in 2014. Put more women onscreen.

We analyzed the top 50 biggest box office movies of 2013 to see if they passed the Bechdel Test, which evaluates whether a movie has two or more women in it who have a conversation about something other than a man. Read more

Related story:
Few women are scheduled to direct this year

Gender gap in U.S. business ownership

By Scott Shane
(Jan. 29, 2014 | Entrepreneur) - According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, while 10 percent of American men ran and managed their own businesses, seven percent American women owned their businesses. Read more

Not much gender diversity on Sunday News shows

By Nia-Malika Hendersen
(Jan. 31, 2014 | The Washington Post) - For anyone who watches the Sunday shows on network television, one thing has been clear for a number of years: men do most of the talking. That fact, based on new numbers from Media Matters for America, has now prompted a group of women’s organizations to write a letter to the six network and cable news heads that says in part . . . Read more

Feminism: A national conversation for adults

By Christian Christensen
(Medium.Com ) - A few months back I left Stockholm to go to the nation of my birth, the United States, in order to attend a conference in Denver. During my stay I went to a mall to stock up on some favorite items I cannot get here in Sweden. Read more

At Davos, Sheryl Sandberg’s silence on politics and quotas says it all

By Joann Weiner
(Jan. 25, 2014 | The Washington Post) - In a highly-anticipated session on “Gender-driven Growth” at the World Economic Forum, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg seemed to rule out a run for political office, while the IMF’s Christine Lagarde said that quotas were needed to ensure that women get to the top. Read more

CBBC presenters should decide for themselves whether to wear lipstick

By Daisy Buchanan
(Jan. 29, 2014 | The Guardian) - When CBBC's executive editor, Melissa Hardinge, spoke at a Bafta panel event recently, she stressed the importance of presenting content in a way that is suitable for young people. Read more

4 reasons America is afraid of women with friends

By Soraya Chamely
(Jan. 29, 2014 | Salon.Com) - Erick Erickson is back in the news announcing how proud he is of the moniker “Abortion Barbie,” which he slapped on Wendy Davis earlier this year. As Jessica Luther eloquently explained, this is the ultimate example of “bad mother” narratives, tacked onto “lying bitch” and “gold-digger” stereotypes. Davis is, however, a particularly unpalatable package to her foes. Read more

Why Do we like to watch rich people on tv and in the movies?

By Katherine Schulten
(Jan. 23, 2014 | The New York Times - the learning network) - A recent Room for Debate post begins, “Several Academy Award contenders like ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’ glorify white-collar criminals and scammers, and many reality TV shows embrace the wealthy, too. A new series, ‘#RichKids of Beverly Hills,’ is the latest example of our enthusiasm for ‘ogling the filthy rich.’ Why are we so obsessed with watching the antics of the 1 percent?” Read more

Will #readwomen2014 change our sexist reading habits?

(Jan. 20, 2014 | The Woman's Blog, The Washington Post) - It's a truth universally acknowledged that, although women read more than men, and books by female authors are published in roughly the same numbers, they are more easily overlooked. Their marginalisation by top literary journals, both as reviewers and the reviewed, is confirmed in a yearly count by the organisation Vida: Women in Literary Arts. Read more

Gender