Women Challenging Barriers in Mass Comm Fields

submitted by Carolyn Byerly

As promised, I wanted to post some additional information about problems that feminists (and other leftists) have experienced in the academy in recent years. This follows up on the last FSD session at ICA, in which a number of our members shared some of the findings from their research with women in the mass communication field related to barriers to advancement – getting hired, tenured, promoted, etc. FSD has been tracking women’s advancement for six or seven years through the Media Associations Project, a broad effort that has sometimes involved those in our sister feminist groups in NCA, AEJMC, IAMCR, etc. The MAP has produced an annual session at ICA at which we report what has been learned through our inquiries of the previous year. Alongside our own work, a number of other feminist and critical theorists have been doing parallel work, giving our own efforts a bigger context by revealing similar problems throughout higher education for anyone who challenges status quo ideas, values and practices. I suggest the following as excellent related sources.

Aronowitz, S. (2000). The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Education. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Notes: A readable, thoughtful analysis of how university administrations have systematically worked to eliminate intellectuals who critique or challenge neoliberalism or corporatism, or, in the case of feminists, patriarchal values.

Byerly, Carolyn M. (2004). Women and the Concentration of Media Ownership, pp. 245-262. In Rush, R.R., Oukrup, C. and Creedon, P. (Eds.), Women in Journalism and Mass Communication: A Thirty Year Update. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Notes: This is my own political-economic analysis of women’s problems in academic journalism programs, which I believe is related to larger trends associated with conglomeration in the media industries and the gradual corporate takeover of US culture.

Kolodny, A. (1998). Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC, USA and London, England: Duke University Press.
Notes: Annette Kolodny, a well-known feminist scholar, successfully sued her New England university a number of years ago for sex and religious discrimination. She used the settlement to establish a fund in National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) for other women going the lawsuit route. This book is a sobering tale of her difficult journey to improve the problems she encountered, by entering administration, after her lawsuit.

Rush, R., Oukrup, C. and Creedon, P. (Eds.). (2004). Women in Journalism and Mass Communication: A Thirty Year Update. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, Associates.
Notes: This edited volume contains varied essays and empirical pieces that scrutinize women’s persistent under-ranked status in mass communication fields within the United States. It is the definitive resource to date on why we encounter the problems we do.