Women, Men and Newsroom Leadership

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

NOTE: The subject matter in this video is discussed extensively at API's Authenticity: The Retreat for Women Media Executives seminar, July 24 - 29, 2005, at the Copperfield Inn in North Creek, New York

Despite the recent backlash over remarks by Harvard President Lawrence Summers about women in science, more than 30 years of research on gender differences points to one conclusion: Men and women are different. They think differently and they have different aptitudes.

One of the world’s foremost authorities on gender differences, anthropologist Helen Fisher, was invited to speak to API’s 2002 seminar, Women in Newsroom Leadership. The seminar participants were so impressed with her session that she was subsequently invited to address the national conventions of both the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. And The Gannett Foundation provided the funds to produce this video.

In the video, Dr. Fisher summarizes the key findings of the research on gender and offers suggestions about how women and men can use this knowledge to promote greater understanding in the workplace. Men and women are working side by side, doing the same jobs, for the first time in human history. We all have a lot to learn. Viewing this video is a place to start.

SECTION I -  THE API/PEW STUDY ON WOMEN IN NEWSROOM MANAGEMENT (Click here to see study)

Key Points:

• Nearly half of women editors surveyed said they expect to leave their company or the newspaper industry.
• One in five women editors said they want to move up in the industry.
• Men and women are a lot alike. The real differences in the survey were between "career-confident women and "career-conflicted" women.

Questions:

• What is your reaction to the study?
• How does it fit your own experience?

SECTION II

• THOUGHTS ON GENDER DIFFERENCES
• ATTRIBUTES
• WEB THINKING

Key Points:

• Women excel at verbal fluency; men at spatial aptitudes.
• Men excel at step thinking; women at web thinking and multitasking.
• Genes, hormones and brain architecture influence gender differences.
• Men and women need each other to get ahead.

SECTION III

• HANDLING AMBIGUITY
• LONG-TERM PLANNING
• NURTURING

Key Points:

• Women are uniquely built to cope with ambiguity.
• Women’s aptitude for long-term planning and nurturing evolved from child-rearing.
• Women’s nurturing is associated with the hormone estrogen.
• Women excel at reading nuances of body language.

SECTION IV

• POWER
• WIN-WIN, WIN-LOSE

Key Points:

• For men, power is status; they are more interested in the perks and emblems of success.
• Men live in a world of winners and losers; their jockeying for rank is associated with the hormone testosterone.
• For women, power is connections.
• Women need consensus and harmony; they swap information freely and are more careful to attribute ideas.
• Women have a harder time working with people they don’t like; men just want to “play the game.”

SECTION V

• REFLECTIONS ON THE SURVEY

Key Points:

• Women need support; they are extremely stressed when they do not have support in the workplace.
• Women who display feminine traits are in greater conflict over whether they are going to get ahead.
• When women leave, newspapers lose a more varied, less conventional point of view

SECTION VI

• WHAT WOMEN CAN DO
• WHAT MEN CAN DO

Key Points:

Women can:

• Give orders clearly.
• Stick to one point at a time.
• Take a place suitable to rank.
• Brag.
• Avoid self-mockery and ritual apology.
• Try not to make a plan.
• Pick the right time to talk.

Men can:

• Take turns and listen.
• Be careful about body language.
• Understand women can multitask.
• Provide support, ask advice, apologize.
• Compliment (carefully).
• Tell personal anecdotes.

SECTION VII

• REACTIONS TO DR. FISHER’S WORK

Key Points:

• Some feminists have reacted negatively to this research because they fear it will be used against women.
• Men and women are each a vast array of male and female skills, but there are real gender differences.

SECTION VIII

• THE FUTURE

Key Points:

• Science will find more gender differences rooted in physiology, genetics and evolution.

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