Survey: D.C. Women Equal In Newsroom, Not Out p. 15

By: Mark Fitzgerald

ET'S LET FORT Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram columnist Molly Ivins write the lead from the results of a new survey of women journalists working in Washington, D.C., bureaus: "I though the easy lead is, 'All successful women journalists end up old maids,' " Ivins said in a panel discussion about the survey commissioned by the Chicago chapter of the Association of Women Journalists.
Indeed, the survey of 320 female and male D.C. correspondents found that women generally are doing just as well as men: They get the same kind of assignments, their stories get the same play, they feel equally respected and their pay is good ? if not quite on exactly up to the level of their male colleagues.
Where Washington's female press corps suffers, however, is in their personal lives. Nearly half of the women ? 45% ? have never been married, compared to just 22% of the men. And 64% of the women reporters have never had a child, compared with 40% of the males.
Further, when women reporters do have kids, they are more likely to feel it has hampered their careers. Twice as many females as males ? 41% vs. 22% ? believe being a parent has hurt their career "a fair amount" or "a great deal."
"Although it appears women journalists in Washington have made some great strides, the gains have also come with a trade-off in their personal lives," said Susy Schultz, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter and president of the Association for Women Journalists' Chicago chapter.
Age does not account for the differences in marital status or childlessness, said the survey's authors, Dr. Paul Lavrakas, who conducted the study while still heading the Northwestern University Survey Laboratory, and Susan Stevens, a recent graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.
Both male and female reporters surveyed had a median age of 42 and were overwhelmingly white, with 97% of the men and 88% of the women identifying themselves as non-Hispanic whites. About 38% of the men and women reporters surveyed worked for newspapers and have been journalists for approximately 18 years.
There were few on-the-job differences, mostly subtle, between men and women ? with one big exception: salary.
While the median annual income for reporters as a group was $60,000, the midpoint for women ? that is, half were above, half below ? was in the $40,000 to $60,000 range, while the midpoint for men fell in the $60,000 to $80,000 range.
In addition, men appear to be making more outside income, with 15% of the men earning $25,000 or more while 20% of the women said they earned less than $1,000 from off-the-job sources such as speaking fees or talk shows.
By large percentages, both men and women reporters agree their gender makes no difference in getting good assignments, advancing in their careers or working with sources.
However, significant minorities of women portray Washington as a "man's world" where male reporters can get closer to the mostly male power figures in the capital.