Feedback May 2002 (Vol 43 No 2)

positions at major media, telecommunications and technology companies…” (Haley,2001, p.1). Specifically, the report indicated that just nine percent of this sector’s boardmembers are women and only 13 percent of its top executives are women. Of 757executives included in the study, only 20 (3%) were women who had traditional “clouttitles.” 1 Just one of these 20 women worked for one of the 130 media companyexecutives in the study, and there were no women with clout titles in the ranks of thenetworks (Jamieson, Slass & Porter, 2001, p. 3). Clout titles aside, among the 130media company executives in the study just 13 (10%) were women, and just 20% ofexecutives at the news networks were women (Jamieson et al., 2001, p. 4). The reportalso noted that despite the increasing prominence of female on-air talent at both thelocal and network levels, women accounted for less that 25% of the local newsdirectors nationwide, and only 17% of the television general managers and 13% of theradio GMs. On the network level women accounted for 19% of radio and 38% oftelevision network bureau chiefs (Jamieson et al., 2001, p. 10).The Annenberg report also commented on media trade associations, a topicparticularly germane to this study. It found that of 40 different media andtelecommunication trade associations, women accounted for just 17% and 12% of theboard members respectively. Further, just six (22%) of the 27 media tradeorganizations counted a woman as president (Jamieson et al., 2001, p. 11).Additionally, the Annenberg report noted that:“…women are even less likely to be featured prominently at majormedia and telecommunications industry meetings. Women are rarelysuperpanel members or keynoters. Recent examples include the NationalAssociation of Broadcasters meeting in April 2000 [other associations alsocited] - none of which had women as featured speakers…Where womenare included they are more likely to be moderators than presenters….”(Jamieson et al., 2001, p. 12).The report concluded that mentoring is required to bring more women onto boardsof directors, and that “trade associations should examine their convention andconference programming to ensure that executive women are featured on super-panelsand as keynoters. Such recognition will help companies to identify talented women forother positions” (Jamieson et al., 2001, p. 14).The September 2001 report by the group “Most Influential Women in Radio”indicated that females now manage 15% of all radio stations in the top 100 markets,compared to 13% last year, with no change in the percentage of stations with womenas Sales Managers (30%) or Program Directors (10%). The online report stated:“We are encouraged by the improvement in the number of stationswith female General Managers since the first study was released lastyear…but considering that more than half of radio sales people and nearlya third of radio sales managers are women, the fact that only 15% of thestations are managed by women confirms there is still a glass ceiling inradio. And we continue to be extremely concerned that there is so littleopportunity for women in programming” (Gerberding, 2001).BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 29