Last week, we encouraged The Rachel Maddow Show to push past its 33% ratio of women commentators and strive for better balance. Unfortunately, our encouragement fell on deaf ears this time. The latest Who Talks? data shows The Rachel Maddow Show failed to feature any women throughout the week of October 24–28.
Read MoreCongratulations, New Day. You made it! You enter the GenderAvenger Hall of Fame with a gender ratio of 41% women commentators for the week of October 24–28. Change can happen if we continue to demand it. Tell New Day to keep women’s voices on air!
Read MoreWhile we commend Kelly for standing up to voice concerns important to women around the country, her show has again failed to actually include women commentators. The latest Who Talks? data finds The Kelly File still among the lowest ranking of the six cable news shows when it came to gender balance. For the week of October 17–21, The Kelly File’s coverage of the presidential election only managed to include commentary by women 19% of the time.
Read MoreWe already know that Morning Joe is one of the most consistently disappointing shows tracked by the Who Talks? project, but they hit a new low last week when they included appearances by women in only 14% of their presidential election commentary. Over the past seven months, their average has been a pathetic 24%. We didn’t think they could do worse, and yet they did.
Read MoreWe’re quite fond of data over at Who Talks?, so we can’t help our excitement when we get perfect numbers. CNN’s hour of post-debate coverage following the final presidential debate Wednesday night struck a perfect gender balance with a clean 50/50 split: 6 appearances each by men and women commentators. Bravo!
Read MoreDespite coming in strong with the gender balance of their post-debate commentary after the second presidential debate, Fox network is back at the bottom this week. The Kelly File and Fox & Friends have tied for worst gender ratios of the week with both coming in at only 23%.
Read MoreAnderson Cooper 360 tops the list for gender balance of political commentators again from October 10–14 with 45% appearances by women. While this is a slight dip from the prior week’s 58% mark, we commend the Anderson Cooper 360 team for continuing to create balanced commentary.
Read MoreWho Talks? tracked the gender breakdown of analysts during the hour immediately following the second presidential debate. Most of the networks did spectacularly with gender balances over the 40% mark. Most, that is, except MSNBC, which featured only 4 women commentators out of 18.
Read MoreIt was only two days ago that we pointed out Morning Joe’s abysmal 18% gender ratio for the week, but unfortunately we’re going to have to call them out again. They averaged 24% women pundits both in the one-month roundup and again in the three-month review. The Who Talks? data roundup for the last six months has just come in and Morning Joe’s inclusion of women commentators has still not budged.
Read MoreCusp Conference, held September 28-29 in Chicago, will bring together diverse presenters to spark conversation “about the design of everything.” Cusp invites a varied roster of presenters to produce “thought-provoking presentations by people who are passionate about designing a better future.” Among those presenters, 43% are women!
Read MoreGenderAvenger started tracking Boston Data Festival 2016 in early August when their speaker list consisted of only 3 women (9.7% of overall presenters). A day before the event, they have now reached 13 women speakers. While this is a vast improvement from the original 3 women that GenderAvenger reported a month ago, 20% women speakers is still nothing to brag about for a conference that claims to “highlight the diversity of people, start-ups, and companies dedicated to this domain.” It just goes to show that playing catch up doesn’t work. Gender balance has to be deliberate and a part of the planning process for conferences and events from the very beginning.
Read MoreThe National Book Awards, administered by the National Book Foundation, are awarded to writers who do great work in their genre across four fields. This week, The New Yorker announced the longlist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Among the ten poets listed, five are women!
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