- The Superior council of audio-visual (CSA) leaves this Tuesday a study on the presence of women in audio-visual during the health crisis related to the coronavirus.
- The overall rate of women analyzed in six television and radio newspapers on four different dates and in the special programs linked to Covid-19 between the months of March and May 2020, stands at 41%, a rate unchanged compared to the year 2019.
- On the other hand, the rate of experts drops sharply, from 38% to 20%.
Many were those who were moved during the confinement: in the newspapers and on television sets, where had the women gone? This concern is partly verified by a study of the Superior council of audio-visual (CSA), that 20 Minutes reveals to you this Tuesday.
The overall rate of women analyzed in six television and radio newspapers on four different dates, and in special programs linked to the Covid-19 between March and May 2020, is indeed 41%, exactly the same proportion noted in the report made in March, relating to the year 2019. On the other hand, the rate of experts drops sharply.
A "good news" according to the CSA
“We are still not at par, but there has been no specific impact of the health crisis on the representation of women in the media; I find that in this period when the channels had to work on a just-in-time basis, with reduced teams, journalists in quarantine, in telework, programs that changed, it is rather good news ", welcomes Carole Bienaimé Besse, who chairs the working group "education, protection of the public, social cohesion" of the CSA in which we find discrimination.
In total, 59 programs, representing a volume of almost 89 hours of airtime and 2,962 people indexed, were analyzed in the newspapers of TF1, France 2, BFMTV, LCI, France Inter and RTL on March 12, 16, 25 and April 13. These newspapers focused on the interventions of the President of the Republic: 8 p.m. the same day and 1 p.m. the next day for general interest channels, the "10 p.m. - midnight" portion of the same day, for non-stop news channels, and the mornings of the next day, between 7 am and 9 am, for the radios. The special programs of the channels TF1, France 2, M6 and France 5 were also passed through the scalpel during the two months of confinement. Only the channel M6 arrives at a par (50%), BFMTV obtaining the worst overall score (36%).
Women "often featured in reports"
Contrary to a fear sometimes conveyed on social networks, the overall presence of women on television and on the radio has therefore not diminished, in particular because many health subjects have been treated, and that they are in the majority in this area. field. Thus, according to the CSA, “the proportion of women intervening on the air and exercising the professions of nurses and nursing assistants, respectively at 78% and 91%, are very close to social reality since 87% nurses and 91% of nursing assistants are women ”.
Women thus represented 60% of people on screen in health topics:
“Women have often been highlighted in reports as being at the forefront of the fight against the virus. The period can be summed up in one of the Parisian although one can actually regrettable that this one has considered "the world after" only part of French society, "said Carole loved one Besse, who adds that 'on these subjects, it is always necessary "to rely on scientific data and not only on what we saw on Twitter".
Only 20% of experts
The fact remains that women are very largely underrepresented in several categories, and on this point, the feeling expressed by activists and specialists in gender issues is very close to reality. In the newspapers and broadcasts of the six channels analyzed, female doctors and pharmacists are thus much less numerous than their real proportion in their profession. Only 27% of female doctors and 40% of pharmacists are on screen and on the air, compared to 46% and 67% respectively in reality.
More generally, the overall rate of experts is very low, but above all it is much lower than it was during the months preceding the crisis: it thus fell to 20%, compared to 38% in the report made public by the CSA in March 2020 over the year 2019, almost twice less. What consolidate the observations of the High Council for Equality, which noted on May 6 that "the crisis required a word of authority to reassure and raise awareness: this word was almost exclusively male. "
Figures that are close to those found in another study, published at the same time and revealed by 20 Minutes ,the National Institute of Audiovisual (INA) which noted only 21% of women with strong authority appearing in the banners or "incrustations" of five television news, between March 17 and April 11.
The rate of experts is even lower still in the information programs (16%), which makes say to the CSA that “the treatment of the news“ hot ”thus aggravates the tendency with the under-representation of the women experts. "
80% male scientific advice
This under-representation of female experts is largely due to the fact that health subjects have won over the media (experts and experts have 71% expressed themselves on health subjects), but health is a very hierarchical domain from the point of view of gender, where the authority figures are very largely masculine. In 2016, there were only 17% of university professors - hospital practitioners (PU-PH) according to a report by the general inspectorates for social affairs and higher education.
The immunologist Jean-François Delfraissy, the infectiologist Christophe Rapp, the microbiologist Didier Raoult, the professor Antoine Flahault, the epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet… All these figures, now well known to the media, are great pundits, and they are men. The Scientific Council, installed by the government on March 11, 2020, was itself 80% men. Result: 21% of the health experts present on the air were women.
The political power itself was even more masculine than usual. In the categories “political personality” and “representative of the State” there are respectively 24% and 14% of women, against 33% of political guests in the report on the year 2019. But with a Minister of Health ( Olivier Véran), a director general of Health (Jérome Salomon), a Prime Minister and a president, difficult to do otherwise, unless systematically inviting only women MPs, mayors or senators to counter these bad figures. "The women were there, on screen, but not in positions of power," sums up Carole Bienaimé Besse.
Inequalities compounded by the media
If there are areas where the media have simply reported a very masculine reality, they have sometimes aggravated these inequalities. This is the case for doctors and pharmacists, as we saw above, but also in other areas that were not related to health. Women made up 73% of those presented as children, parents or grandparents, and even 79% for the “parents” category alone.
Although women spend twice as much time looking after children as men, they are not twice as likely to be mothers. Carole Bienaimé Besse is sorry: "It gives an image of very feminine parenthood and gives the feeling that we are in a matrifocal model, which is not the case"
Women health professionals were more often less well presented, that is to say in an incomplete manner, compared to their male counterparts. Only 42% have a complete presentation compared to 58% for men.
Women, as often, have less right to a family name, like the one titling "Ségolène" or "Martine", instead of Ségolène Royal or Martine Aubry. "The person we interview quickly at the entrance to the emergency room, we're not going to take the time to present him or her in full," comments Carole Bienaimé Besse. And this person, caregiver or nurse, is often a woman.
"Shared" responsibility
Experts less present, doctors and pharmacists underrepresented, dominant male power ... To counter these shortcomings, the CSA recommends that the media "pay close attention to key moments in the news". To help them balance their antenna during these key moments, the organization also wants to improve the Guide for Experts, a tool accessible to journalists that also wants to support MP Céline Calvez, in charge of a mission on the place of women in media, and whose report comes out on Tuesday.
But the ball is also in the court of society, said Carole Bienaimé Besse. One may wonder for example why the Secretary of State Christelle Dubos, attached to the Minister of Health, was not more visible. It would have been in the power of the government to send it more to the front, why did it not do so? The CSA report also notes that while women make up half of the Institut Pasteur teams, only one intervened among the fifteen people working at the Institut Pasteur who expressed themselves in the programs analyzed. And the head of the CSA to conclude: "The responsibility is shared. "
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