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Rejecting the ‘F-word’ How

‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ are
understood in the newsroom

ARTICLE in JOURNALISM · JANUARY 2009

DOI: 10.1177/1464884909344479

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Vol. 10(6): 739–757 DOI: 10.1177/1464884909344479

ARTICLE

Rejecting the ‘F-word’

How ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ are understood in the
newsroom

Louise North
Monash University, Australia

ABSTRACT

Feminist media scholarship in the past 30 years has focused on the representation
of women in the media while an understanding of those who produce the
representations has received little attention. In this article I am concerned with how
some Australian journalists understand and experience the social/political movement
of feminism and its advocates, feminists, as news sources and colleagues. I particularly
focus on fleshing out how female journalists and those who identify as feminist
discuss, negotiate, compromise and sometimes ‘survive’ a masculine newsroom
culture. Moreover, I ask why it is that male and female journalists in my interviews –
feminist-identified or not – resist or reject embracing or using the terms ‘feminism’
and ‘feminist’ in the context of the newsroom. A decade ago, Kay Schaffer astutely
noted that feminism had become a ‘scare word’ in media discourse. I take this idea
a step further by analysing more broadly how some journalists talk about ‘feminism’
and ‘feminists’.
KEY WORDS female journalists feminism feminists journalism
journalists news media newsroom culture

Introduction

The words ‘feminism’ or ‘feminist’ have always had political meaning. In

the last 30 years, during the period known as second wave feminism and
more recently (particularly in the media) as post-feminism, those two words
have held mostly negative connotations within popular culture, the main-
stream media and everyday life throughout the western world. The Australian
print news media’s descriptions and representations of the social/political
movement ‘feminism’ and its advocate ‘feminists’ have been predominantly
740 Journalism 10(6)

disparaging during this period. Feminism has become a ‘scare word’ in popular
and media discourse, said Australian feminist scholar Kay Schaffer in 1998. A
decade on, feminism is still a ‘scare word’, conjuring up fear and reinforcing
stereotypes of a humourless, punitive ‘other’.
Much second wave feminist research has explored how women have
been represented in the mainstream media. How feminism and feminists are
represented in the media (and work in media industries) has received less
scholarly attention although important contributions to the field include,
but are not limited to, Byerly (1999, 2004a, 2004b), Douglas (1994), Faludi
(1991), Huddy (1997), Schaffer (1998) and Sheridan et al. (2006). We have not
known, except anecdotally within industry ranks, how Australian journalists
have experienced or understood those words and their meanings within
the context of the newsroom – and how this may or may not shape their
reporting.1 The focus has been on the representation of feminism rather than
the attitudes of journalists to feminism and feminists. Internationally, the
issue of how feminist journalists and activists have negotiated the media has
been addressed most recently by Byerly and Ross (2006). Even so, I have yet
to find any research that asks a range of male and female news journalists
how they understand feminism and feminists.2 By analysing how journalists
understand ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ we can gain a glimpse into how main-
stream newsroom culture privileges masculinity at the expense of alternative
ways of being in and viewing the world (e.g. a feminist position) and report-
ing it. This article makes clear why a feminist subjectivity in the newsroom is
so undesirable and untenable for many journalists.

Method

It is axiomatic to say that feminism has been an influential social and political
movement in the western world and its aims have been amplified, projected,
shaped and challenged by media representations and debates. Feminism is a
political movement that has transformed, in particular, white western society
and the way in which gender relations are understood. The media perform an
important and influential affirmatory role regarding gender norms – and by
association the broader understanding of feminism and its aims. Most people
derive their information about what ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ mean from the
media, rather than university classes on feminist theory (Huddy, 1997). But
what do the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ mean to journalists who take
part in the various constructions of feminist and anti-feminist news frames
and what subject positions do they take up in relation to it? I take a three-fold
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 741

approach to exploring this question. Firstly, I examine the representations of

feminism in the worldwide news media; secondly, I probe the literature on
women’s situations in newsrooms as journalists; and thirdly, I draw on my
own research with Australian print media journalists to identify what it is
about ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ that is, in the main, so repugnant to them. In
doing so, I also explore the experiences of feminist-identified journalists.

Research design

The research that underpins this article is derived from my broader-themed

PhD project concerning the gendered production of news in the Australian
print news media. In 2004 I conducted 17 face-to-face, semi-structured,
in-depth interviews with Australian print news media journalists. The par-
ticipants were drawn from newsrooms in four of Australia’s eight states and
territories and they worked variously for four metropolitan and two regional
dailies owned by a broad cross-section of media companies – News Limited,
John Fairfax Holdings, Australian Provincial Newspapers (APN) and the
now merged Rural Press group. Potential interviewees for the research were
formally contacted, in the majority of cases via introductions from third
parties. The eight men and nine women interviewed ranged in age, industry
experience and seniority. The majority had been in the industry on average
about 15 years, but a few had less than two years’ experience, while some
had 38 or 39 years’ experience. The participants’ ages varied from 19 to 56.
The participants were guaranteed anonymity in published work that arose
from the research and pseudonyms applied.
I do not suggest that everything that the interviewees discussed with me
can be understood as objective ‘truth’, but I do understand it as part of their
individual ‘truth’ within very complex organizations in the occupation of
journalism. I am aware, also, that analysis of 17 interviews does not allow for
definitive statements generally applicable to all Australian journalists or the
industry as a whole. The research project was not proposed as a represent-
ative sample, but rather a small and diverse sample that offered the oppor-
tunity for a close reading of the transcripts and an exploration of a variety
of key themes. The merit of the research consists in revealing how the
subjectivities of journalists take effect in the newsroom and which factors
might mitigate them. In this article, understanding processes of subjectivity
centres around how and why journalists take up particular subject positions
in relation to feminist colleagues and sources and to feminism as a social/
political movement.
742 Journalism 10(6)

The representation of feminism in the news media

The media, many feminists have argued, tend towards hostile and negative
constructions of feminism, ranging from ridicule through to trivialization and
attacks on movement spokeswomen (Bradley, 1998; Huddy, 1997; Sheridan
et al., 2006). Feminism has been relegated and castigated by the media – it is
the ‘F-word’ (Whelehan, 2000), a ‘scare word’ (Schaffer, 1998), a ‘dirty word’
(Baker Beck, 1998). British academic Imelda Whelehan (2000: 15) argues that
feminism, in its heyday of the mid-1970s, was ‘engagingly oppositional and
challenging, enabling women to identify themselves as an oppressed group
who, united, could gain the power to contest some of the most enduring
preconceptions about femininity and female potential’. Today, feminism has
been squeezed of its original challenging potential because of a backlash,
articulated so poignantly in Susan Faludi’s book Backlash (1991). In the
media the backlash against feminists occurs through their portrayal as ‘overly
aggressive, man-hating’ and ‘deliberately unattractive’ (Douglas, 1994; Faludi,
1991). Feminism is now the ‘F-word’, ‘perceived to be an empty dogma which
brainwashed a whole generation of women into false consciousness of their
relationship to power’ (Whelehan, 2000: 16). Schaffer (1998) provides a
similar account of the stigmatization of feminism, although she is much more
specific about the media’s role in the process. Schaffer (1998: 321) argues
that the ‘ongoing scourge on feminists in the media’ has a part to play in
‘reducing the efficacy of a politics of feminism’. For Schaffer, the word ‘femi-
nism’ has been twisted by popular backlash politics, increasingly replaced by
some media commentators by the derogatory term ‘feminazi’. In so doing,
feminism has become what she calls a ‘scare word’:
A word that has been used to invoke (although no dictionary would say so) the
1970s stereotype of bra burning, man hating lesbians who made up the boiler-
maker suit brigade, and now in the 1990s is aligned with the vindictive, puritanical
and punishing new generation of ‘feminazis’. (Schaffer, 1998: 322)

Whelehan and Schaffer are not alone in their observations. American

Debra Baker Beck (1998: 139) maintains that feminism has become a ‘dirty
word’ because of the media’s ‘distaste for active, assertive women – and the
way the media portray them – has turned all feminists into a frightening
fringe element’.
Not all feminist media scholars, however, have focused on the negative
representations of feminism. Australian researchers Susan Sheridan, Susan
Margarey and Sandra Lilburn (2006) see a multiplicity of representations of
feminism in their analysis of specific case studies in the Australian print media
from 1970 to 1995: ‘Whether or not it is named by the “f-word”, feminism is
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 743

today a familiar feature of the contemporary scene, and a force to be reckoned

with’ (Sheridan et al., 2006: 25). They found that the media’s representation
of particular events in which feminism was explicit was often unpredictable
and unstable. Sheridan et al. (2006) challenge much feminist analysis about
the media’s relationship with feminism and feminists. They conclude that
media constructions of ‘feminism’ have varied over time and in relation to
different issues, and that the location of feminist issues in mainstream political
institutions, like parliament or the United Nations, has produced serious and
attentive reporting. Leonie Huddy’s (1997: 183) American study over a parallel
timeframe takes a similar line that, despite feminism’s varied meanings, ‘it
enjoys widespread popularity as a term to describe the beliefs and adherents
of the women’s movement’. Even so, Huddy’s (1997: 201) findings on the
use of the words ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’ in the New York Times and three
weekly news magazines in the USA between 1965 and 1993 show a more
narrow representation than the breadth of people, organizations and issues
inherent in the women’s movement. The term ‘feminist’ was reserved for a
small group of ‘superstar’ media spokeswomen (a similar finding to Sheridan
et al.) and limited to a small number of mainstream feminist organizations
despite the large number of feminist organizations (and feminists) in the
country. Huddy (1997) also concludes that the media depict work-related
concerns as less central to a feminist agenda, saving its labels for issues of
domestic concern. This is in contrast to Sheridan et al. (2006) who find that
the variety of feminisms (counterpublics) represented in the news interact
with strong publics (politics, law and education). American Carolyn Byerly
(1999: 383–4), who has a long and distinguished history in feminist media
studies, also argues that feminism has ‘deeply embedded itself in the fabric
of media messages and the industries that produce them’ and routinely con-
tains feminist language, ideas and perspectives. It is time to move beyond
the misogynist media perspective that has tended to dominate feminist
media research, she argues. Indeed, some feminist scholars’ continued
embrace of the backlash theory surprises Byerly: ‘Backlash theory loses sight
of the many ways that feminists have found to communicate ideas about
women’s liberation among each other, as well as with women in more general
audiences who might not identify with the feminist label’ (1999: 387). Byerly
(1999) reminds us that feminism has had a profound effect on legal and other
social policy and has helped circulate a feminist language in the news media.
Feminism is also at work within news organizations via a new generation of
journalists who understand and identify with feminism. This may well be the
case in America and arguably to a lesser degree in Australia; however, I am
cautious about dismissing the importance of news agendas and newsroom
744 Journalism 10(6)

culture in directing and shaping journalists’ subjectivities and journalistic

output. I argue that even though some journalists may enter the industry
with a feminist philosophy, this is not necessarily a basis for that perspective
to be evident in the news content they produce or utilized to positive effect to
challenge aspects of a hegemonically masculine newsroom culture.
Catharine Lumby is an Australian academic (and former journalist) who
also holds an upbeat view about the widespread nature of feminist influences
in popular culture and the media – and in turn she is widely called upon to
comment on feminist and gender issues in the media, particularly when the
issue is about the representation of women by the media. In both lifestyle
and news genres the media offer a range of implicitly feminist perspectives,
Lumby (1997) argues. It is the feminization of the news – via the tabloidiza-
tion of the media, where news and lifestyle stories are subsumed – that
enhances a feminist perspective. Just as the division between the tabloid and
quality news is breaking down, she argues, so too is the division between
serious public masculine ‘politics’ and ‘personal’ gender issues that have been
politicized by feminism (in Sheridan et al., 2006). In this new ‘democratic’ arena
women are far from powerless victims or dupes of the media. Nevertheless,
within the media some female journalists experience the newsroom as far
from democratic.

Women’s situations in newsrooms as journalists

Women’s entry into journalism in Australia has been one of the most signifi-
cant changes in the industry in the past 30 years. Even though women have
entered the media in unprecedented numbers (Peters, 2001: 4) and now
account for more than a third of the working journalists around the world,
the newsrooms of print news media organizations remain masculine and
hegemonic where men dominate the decision-making roles and female journ-
alists remain, in most cases, en masse in lower paid, less senior roles. In 2006,
20 of the nation’s 21 major metropolitan newspapers were edited by men
(MacLean, 2006: 17).
In most western countries, the increasing number of women in journalism
has run parallel to significant changes in how news is defined (Djerf-Pierre
and Lofgren-Nilsson, 2001). As Lumby (1997) has made clear, tabloidization,
feminization, commercialization and popularization are concepts frequently
used to describe the new style of news journalism. In my experience, when
these terms are used by journalists they are rarely in a positive frame. This
process of feminization is generally considered a ‘dumbing down’ of the in-
dustry and based on a privileging of hard news as being rooted in a masculine
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 745

ethic of what news really is. Female journalists, accordingly, attempt to dis-
tance themselves from ‘soft’ news stories. In her autobiographical account of
some of the traps of being a female journalist, Australian television journalist
Virginia Haussegger makes it very clear that she wanted to stay well clear of
‘colour’ or ‘soft’ stories. She had made complaints to her senior editor:

The men on the program were being assigned all the best stories – the overseas
trips and the war jobs – while the women were stuck with the ‘colour’ stories. I was
told to shut up and pull my head in. So off I went on yet another soft story, only
to return hours later to find a present in my office. It was a very large, long, thick
black rubber penis, sitting upright on my desk. (2005: 49)

How would she handle such a situation? Victim or victor, she asked herself.
She walked into her boss’s office with the penis on her head and said, ‘Well,
look at this, I’ve got one too! So now do I get the overseas assignment?’ She
got the overseas assignment – to Hawaii to cover the Supermodel of the World
competition (2005: 49). One must question that Haussegger’s senior editor
had ready access to such an object at such short notice and wonder, had it
been used before for just such an occasion?
One of the female interviewees in my study describes why and how softer
stories are constantly allocated to women in her newsroom. As well, she makes
transparent seeming discrepancies in workloads at her newspaper:

Christine: We have all male editors and they like relating to their women as women,
not relating to them as workers, right. So that instantly sets up discrepancies where
you find that the boys in the newsroom get the better jobs, police reporting and
politics, and the girls go out and interview Noni Hazlehurst [presenter of a popular
lifestyle television show] when she comes to town about the TV show.

LN: So those political stories are considered better news and therefore those people
get promotions more quickly and easily?

Christine: Well, they are seen as more challenging areas of journalism. The girls
can write 10 stories a day about the soft stuff, but the men can just work on one
or two stories in the hard news areas because they’re more challenging, a bit more
difficult, they give those jobs to the boys.

It is not only the feminization of the news that devalues women’s position
in the industry. The coverage of ‘men’s’ sport by female reporters is another
contentious area – an area where the penis is quite literally used as a marker
of difference and of some women’s supposed desire to have it flashed at them
as an indicator (or reminder) of the power they do not have (whether it be a
replica in the case of Haussegger or a ‘real’ penis in this next case). Lisa Disch
and Mary Jo Kane (1996) outline a staggering case in America whereby Boston
Herald reporter Lisa Olson was sexually harassed in the locker room of a major
league football team. The incident was sparked by a player who walked over
746 Journalism 10(6)

to Olson and thrust his penis towards her, asking ‘Do you want a bite out
of this?’ Several other players then followed suit, parading their genitals in
a mock strip tease while others variously shouted ‘Did she look? Get her to
look. That’s what she wants’ (Heymann, 1990: 15–17, in Disch and Kane,
1996: 278). Olson reported the incident to the editor of the Herald, wanting
the matter handled privately and demanding an apology. Her story broke
in a rival newspaper a few days later, against her wishes. The report sparked
hundreds of articles and editorials which drove a national debate ‘over what
some characterized as the propriety of having women sports reporters in men’s
locker rooms and what others defined as a violation of a reporter’s gender-
neutral right of access to the players’ (1996: 279). Olson’s experience is not
new, as journalist Mariah Burton Nelson (1994: 228) suggests: ‘Sexual harass-
ment is as familiar to female [sports] journalists as the scent of sweat.’3 Olson
was forced to stop covering sport in the area after fans threatened her with
phone calls, obscenities and even death threats. She later moved to Australia.
In Australia in late 2007 another case was reported in the media of one of
the few female sports reporters on commercial television being sacked from
covering cricket for Channel Nine, a job she had secured just a year before
in a blaze of publicity. Reporter Stephanie Brantz had covered soccer for SBS
Television before taking up the job with the Nine Network before the 2006/07
Ashes series. By the end of the series 34-year-old Brantz had interviewed only
one Australian cricketer – an injured player sitting in the stands. She was given
trivial stories to cover on the English supporter group the ‘Barmy Army’ and
an Australian cricketer’s girlfriend and model Lara Bingle. On 13 December
a media report confirmed that Nine bosses told Brantz that players in the
Australian cricket team refused to be interviewed by her and therefore she
had to go (Halloran, 2007). Yet the same report also revealed that the game’s
governing body, Cricket Australia, was not aware of the cricketers having any
problem with Brantz. A Cricket Australia spokesman was reported to have
said that it encouraged broadcasters to include women journalists in their
coverage in an effort to lift the number of women watching above its current
level of about 35 per cent of viewers (Halloran, 2007). Nevertheless, Brantz
was banished from Nine’s cricket coverage and reporting of the 2007/08
Australian cricket season was returned to an all-male team.
I am not suggesting that all female reporters’ experiences of the newsroom
or their jobs are as degrading as Olsen’s or, like Brantz, end up sacked from
reporting predominantly male sports. In addition, not all male journalists
(or sources in Olsen’s case) are involved in such unsophisticated sexism and
sexual harassment. Here I am wanting to make clear some of the embodied
ways that having a penis or not having a penis work to include and exclude
some journalists from effectively being ‘a journalist’.
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 747

Being a feminist in the newsroom

As evidenced, just being a female journalist is often challenging enough, but

taking up a feminist subject position in journalism is even more contentious.
Many of the journalists I interviewed about those colleagues who demon-
strated some kind of feminist position in the newsroom took up a hostile pos-
ition. The majority of interviewees variously labelled feminists, both inside
and outside the newsroom, with a long list of pejorative terms. Feminists
were ‘aggressive’, ‘strident’, ‘insecure’, ‘abrasive’, ‘not nice’, ‘demanding’, ‘over
the top’, ‘full on’, ‘emotional’, ‘scary’, ‘abrupt’ and ‘self-righteous’. Feminists
were also referred to as lacking humour and espousing impractical political
positions; and being overly critical. Overall there was a sense that the majority
of interviewees understood feminists as angry and extreme in their actions and
often pushed their politics ‘too far’. One young male reporter even queried if
women who displayed feminist beliefs had ‘something happen to them, some
emotional sort of thing’ to make them believe in feminism – like feminism
was some type of psychological disorder. The distaste that my interviewees
demonstrated towards feminists was not limited by gender. Female journalists
were as equally scathing of feminism as male journalists and, particularly, of
feminists – some negatively describing their physical and emotional charac-
teristics and/or confidently suggesting where they went wrong in their actions
in the newsroom, including their reportage, their politics and their approach
and demeanour in general.
Knowledge about ‘feminism’ ranged from little (or a decision to say very
little in response to the question) to an awareness of the plurality of feminism.
Knowledge about feminism, however, was not a precursor to having a positive
experience of feminist concepts, or indeed feminists themselves. Only one
interviewee pointed to a benefit or to changes in the newsroom because of
feminism and that was to acknowledge that there were more women working
in the industry. Of the three women who identified as feminists (Janet, Susan,
Christine, all aged in their mid-30s and above) in the interviews, one (Susan)
noted that the changing position of female journalists today could be due to
the second wave feminist movement, but her comment related more to media
content rather than cultural changes in the newsroom. All three lamented
that feminism had not improved a newsroom culture that still privileged male
journalists and male journalists’ opinions. Janet noted a ‘backlash’ against
feminist beliefs and lamented that it was now ‘uncool’ to be a feminist in the
newsroom.
My analysis of the participants’ interview transcripts indicates three com-
mon themes in how each understands ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’: feminists/
feminism are/is impractical; female journalists reject/avoid being labelled
748 Journalism 10(6)

feminist; and feminism compromises journalists’ integrity. All of the ex-

cerpts that follow contain elements of one or more of the themes interwoven
through the narrative.

The impracticability of ‘feminism’/’feminists’

Paul, a 26-year-old metropolitan political reporter, told me he knew some

women who identified as feminists in the newsroom. I asked how he defined
them as feminist:

Paul: By what they write, by how they talk, their attitude towards things. Some-
times they would take a really predictable line on an issue and you’d think, ‘oh,
you know – really’. When they are writing, mainly on the opinion page, you see
things, they are really clutching at straws with a lot of those arguments. They’re
just not practical in a sense. But by reputation too, what other people talk about.
It’s sort of, there’s nothing explicit really, but we are known to have some pretty
self-righteous people who are strong advocates for equal opportunity and women’s
rights. I think by and large they often write some decent, very good stuff, but
I think it can go a bit far at times and it’s very easy to detect that someone’s been
ultra sensitive or ultra politically correct. I think you need a little bit of a sense of
humour and be able to have the ability to take the piss out of yourselves and other
people and be more well respected, don’t be so serious. And when you are being
serious, people will take more notice of you.

For Paul, feminist journalists can be identified not only by what they write –
that being their primarily ‘self-righteous’, humourless, impractical political
position – but also by their ‘talk’ and their attitude, and their reputation
garnered from what others say about them. Paul then goes on to suggest that
there are no ‘explicit’ characteristics associated with being a feminist or having
a feminist philosophy, but he seems to have little trouble unpacking their
politics (‘ultra sensitive or ultra politically correct’) and offering advice on how
feminists could gain respect. Paul thinks that if feminists had a better sense
of humour then respect would be forthcoming. But who is Paul suggesting
would better respect feminists if they could ‘take the piss’ out of themselves?
Is it the newspaper readers or the male-dominated management? Paul draws
on an age-old sleight that feminists are humourless and later in the interview
he draws on another common refrain, that of being criticized for opening
doors for women. In this (and other excerpts) about feminists, Paul never uses
the word ‘feminist’ or ‘feminism’. It is always ‘they’ or ‘yourselves’ that links
me with feminists, even though I have never identified myself to him in
this way. Just asking questions about feminists associates me as a feminist.
The word itself taints the speaker because in the passage I quote, and indeed
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 749

through all the sections of the interview where feminism is a point of dis-
cussion, he does not use the word.
What is the effect of this? What is kept safe for Paul by not using the word?
How do his avoidance of the ‘F-word’ and recourse to women’s presentation
– humourlessness and lacking manners – contain the challenge of feminism?
I think the lack of the use of the term ‘feminism’, even though in his opinion
he is clearly describing feminist women, keeps him safely distanced from a
feminist understanding, knowledge or discourse. This distance creates a safe
place from which he can describe the event without being associated with
feminism. He becomes the observer, the knower, the rational man of ideas,
offering advice to feminists who certainly need it if they are, in his opinion,
to be taken seriously.
Max (a 26-year-old regional cadet reporter) and Paul have a similar con-
text in which to place a feminist ideology. Feminism is an over-reaction
and feminists push too far. Holding a feminist belief is even equated with a
psychological disorder:

Max: To me feminism seems to be a reaction against sexism, and implicit in that

is – in my perception – that it seems to be an overt reaction, and so much so that
someone stops being someone who is reacting against sexism but is more so pro-
feminism and pushing it too far. When you mention feminism, it seems to instill
an immediate kneejerk reaction, like that ‘there’s no need to be that way’, you
know what I mean? I think it is mainly because feminists came up against a very
male-oriented society, and that’s why there’s an automatic negative tone to using
the word feminism, not necessarily for me, but I think, well if someone’s going
to come out and be very proud about being a feminist, I sort of think, they’re
immediately going to take some flack for being it.

LN: Do you know anybody who is outwardly saying, ‘I’m a feminist and that’s
okay?’

Max: No, not really. I see women that occasionally adopt the idea, but I don’t see
anyone that pushes it in everything they do. I knew a few, when I was studying,
and yet they were so feminist that it almost … oh, we wondered, because we were
all teenagers, you know, you often wonder is this kind of a gimmick that they’re
going through at the moment? Did something happen to them, some emotional
sort of thing? I mean it’s terrible to think that way, because you automatically
assume something set this off, rather than they’ve just chosen to be that way.

Max understands feminism, not in the context of one of many political

philosophies that could underpin a person’s life, but as something that is to
be ‘pushed’ every day. For Max, that is how you know someone is a feminist –
they constantly push the idea and demonstrate it in public. Max’s subject
position is, however, different from Paul’s. Max’s comments are contradictory.
He does, for example, adopt the words from a feminist vocabulary, such as
750 Journalism 10(6)

‘sexism’, ‘male-oriented society’, but he then uses the term ‘gimmick’ to

demean feminism. Max’s excerpt also demonstrates a self-reflexive, defensive
subject position, as well as clearly subscribing to an anti-feminist discourse.
Initially Max calmly claims that feminism is a reaction to sexism, although
he does not suggest that men are complicit in this. It is only feminists who
‘came up against a very male-orientated society’, rather than women in general.
The women he knows now do not identify as feminists and consequently
those women from university must have had ‘something happen to them,
some emotional sort of thing’ to force them into a feminist position. For Max,
therefore, feminism is an ‘overt reaction’ (and feminists react overtly). Max
offers a reason for the negativity associated with being a feminist, but is it
that the male-dominated society is reacting against the word or the actions of
feminists in exposing the male dominance in the public sphere?
Sally (a 26-year-old metropolitan sub-editor), like Paul and Max, is simi-
larly critical of the only colleague who she thinks is a feminist. I asked her
if any of the female journalists in her newsroom would consider themselves
feminists. Like Paul, Sally doesn’t use the word ‘feminist’ during the interview,
but believes, like Paul and Max, that feminists often go too far.

Sally: I think probably one, she’s a general reporter, she’s pretty full on. She gets
pretty emotional even with a half picture of half an abdomen or something that’s
not covered, she starts to get really upset about things.

LN: How is she viewed in the newsroom?

Sally: She’s full on, she’s pretty abrupt, she’s pretty emotional too. One minute
she’ll be happy and she’ll be okay, and the next minute something will happen
which we all think is minor, but she just absolutely blows up and she cries, or she’ll
blow up at somebody and absolutely gives it to them. … She throws her weight
around. People are actually a bit scared of her.

How to be a ‘proper’ (quiet, uncritical) feminist

So, if feminists do go ‘too far’ what is the appropriate method of resistance to

those who want to challenge a sexist newsroom culture? Jessica (a 21-year-old
regional cadet) maintains that there are ‘nicer’ ways that feminist opinions
should be espoused, ones that are more palatable to co-workers and less dis-
ruptive in the newsroom. I ask Jessica if anyone in her newsroom identifies as a
feminist and she tells me that there is one feminist in the newsroom:

Jessica: I think she gets shot down all the time. She goes about it the wrong way.
I remember one day she cut out a whole bunch of things, like all the sport pages
from one edition, and she put notes on the board and wrote, ‘Where’s the women’s
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 751

sport in the sports section?’ But instead of … maybe she waited until it was too
late, until it had been done, she didn’t go to the [male] chief-of-staff and maybe
she might not have been working, but if she had been working, and she knew
things that were on, then she could have said ‘oh you know, there’s women’s
soccer going on here, and there’s this going on, why don’t we do something with
that?’ Instead, it was just a criticism – she stuck it up on the board and wrote all
over it, which people get a bit weird about. Often that’s where the subs put up the
things that are wrong, or wrong with the paper, and everyone looks at them. It’s
not something that gets talked about a lot. You put things up there that everyone
needs to read but no one necessarily talks about.

LN: So you are saying there’s different ways of negotiating those problems?

Jessica: Yeah.

LN: And it’s a quieter, it’s a more subtle way of doing it?

Jessica: Yeah, I think everyone here gets very upset about people who drag out their
soap box and start shouting about things. It’s not the way to go.

Jessica has her preferred method of challenging perceived inequity:

Jessica: I have started saying ‘oh, it’s another warm day, is anyone going up to the
[river area] to get a picture of a girl lying on her stomach?’ Then they go ‘oh no’.
So maybe you hope that it starts to get through, that people realize that we know
what goes on. Maybe no one’s really thought about it either.

Jessica’s idealistic notion of how to challenge gender inequity is via sarcasm

and keeping faith in the liberal narrative, but it appears not to have been suc-
cessful. This position is based on being complicit with traditional femininity
and an ethic of care – asking ‘nicely’ – as if it were a favour to women (and
female journalists) that the newspaper published stories about sportswomen.
Jessica’s reaction to her colleague’s complaint about the lack of women’s sport
in the newspaper also assumes that there was a beginning point before things
went bad and her colleague should have intervened.
I find Jessica’s excerpts here particularly troubling, because during the
interview she demonstrates a solid understanding of gender politics in the
newsroom. She acknowledges a division between how male and female
journalists experience the newsroom and the inequity for women and how
some of these issues are major frustrations for her. Jessica also tells me that
she is pleased there is one senior female sub-editor on staff in whom she
can confide and discuss her stories, leaving her feeling positive rather than
undervalued which is how the male sub-editors’ criticisms make her feel.
Nevertheless, Jessica is very quick to portray a feminist journalist negatively if
that woman challenges issues that she experiences as inequitable.
When I re-read this excerpt, Jessica sounds frightened. Then I recall how
Jessica negotiated the location of the interview, and my initial reaction seems
752 Journalism 10(6)

correct. Jessica was pleased to be involved in the project and happy to be

interviewed. She chose to come to the office on her day off and specifically asked
that she enter the room in which the interview was to take place via a side door.
She said this was to avoid walking through the newsroom, but gave no further
explanation. Once I had opened the side door, she surveyed the room making
sure that all entry doors to the newsroom were closed ‘in case someone might
overhear our interview’. This was in complete contrast to two male interviewees
from this newspaper interviewed on the same day: one left his office door open
and the other didn’t discuss the office geography or feel uncomfortable with
others knowing he was being interviewed. Jessica is frightened by, shamed by,
sees as disadvantageous to her, the methods and the styles – in fact actually
doing anything – that draws attention to the issues she raises. The pin-board,
for example, is a sacred space that (male) sub-editors ‘get a bit weird about’.
It’s their space to use to chastise subordinate staff in writing so that they
don’t have to talk to them or challenge them directly and, in so doing, the hier-
archy remains firmly established with little disruption or verbal disputes. It’s
a board where subs can put up (serious) notices that affect the newspaper and
where sub-editors alert staff to their mistakes. Yet a senior female reporter –
and a feminist – who wants to alert section editors to what she perceives as
errors in judgment about newspaper content is to be rebuked for using the
same communication methods, not only by the ‘owners’ of the board, but
also by one of her female colleagues.

Rejecting/avoiding the ‘feminist’ tag

It is not surprising that after being told these stories about feminists and
feminism, female journalists would not want to be labelled ‘feminist’. The
oldest woman that I interviewed was 55-year-old regional editor Pat, who
was reluctant to take up the feminist label, even though she knows that her
actions during her long career have been construed as being underpinned by a
feminist philosophy. When appointed in 1988, Pat was one of the first female
editors of a daily newspaper in Australia and is now the longest standing
female editor in Australia, entering her 20th year in 2008. In the interview she
recalls stories from the late 1970s, and beyond, detailing at length how she
personally challenged gender inequity, stereotypes and unwritten rules.
Pat works hard in the interview to deny being a feminist, even including
her husband in the interview to shore up her position as a non-feminist, but
not anti-feminist, for she never chastises feminist women or feminist politics.
Rather, she sees herself very individually, challenging a range of inequities.
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 753

The interview had taken place in Pat’s home and her husband had moved in
and out of the room during the later part of the interview, only stopping and
involving himself in the conversation, at the request of Pat, when our talk
turned to feminism. We had been discussing some of her ideas about news
content and if there were stories that appealed to women more than men and
vice versa. I saw this as an opportunity to discuss her ideas about feminism.

LN: Your ideas are pretty progressive then, so would you go a step further, or
maybe not see it as a step further, and call yourself a feminist or is that a term that’s
very old hat? How do you see it?

Pat: I don’t think I’ve ever been a feminist. I think occasionally I’ve got too blokey,
haven’t I, a little bit? [question to husband]

Husband: No, I don’t – other people see you as a feminist, but you don’t see your-
self as one. You sort of stick up for your rights, I think.

Janet (a feminist-identified 40-year-old former reporter) clearly articulates

why women like Pat might downplay feminist values, even though Pat has
been active, individually, in challenging gender discrimination in the past.
Janet is talking about a publicly identified feminist in a major city newsroom.
At the same time, Janet also offers a reason why Jessica might be so scared of
female journalists who challenge gender discrimination in the newsroom.

Janet: She’s outspoken … [inaudible] other women don’t support her because they
are scared of not getting promoted, feeling threatened [inaudible].

LN: But they won’t support her publicly?

Janet: They don’t.

LN: But privately?

Janet: It’s not a case of supporting her. They won’t take her position. They won’t
follow through with her. In a more formal way they are scared of losing their job,
I don’t know; scared of not being promoted. I don’t know. They are threatened.

Janet ‘knows’ the way that sexism works. She has articulated that point to
me during the interview. She has been a recipient of it, and she has watched
it happen to other young women. Janet is critical of women not supporting
this feminist journalist. I have had phone and email conversations with the
feminist journalist that Janet tells me about. She still works with that news-
paper and continues to maintain strong support mechanisms to call upon.
These include being involved with the industry union at a very high level,
speaking publicly about the difficulty female journalists face in the industry,
and writing articles for international women’s media groups. Nevertheless, I
find it interesting that when I speak to her (September 2004) she downplays
gender issues and claims that she tries to stay away from talking about gender
754 Journalism 10(6)

publicly. It seems that even to publicly identified feminists, the ‘F-word’ must
still be downplayed, if not disavowed, to survive as a successful journalist in
today’s print news media.

Integrity and feminism

Feminist journalists also downplay their political position because feminism

is often understood as a subjective position – one not consonant with the
objectivity supposedly required and deployed in news reporting. One journalist
that I interviewed, however, offered evidence of eschewing objectivity on the
basis of being a Labor Party supporter. Mark is a 55-year-old senior reporter
for a metropolitan newspaper who has worked in the industry for 38 years.
In detailing his long career, he discusses various jobs outside of journalism
where he worked for various state Labor governments. He proudly asserts in
our interview:

Mark: I’m a Labor [Party] person [supporter] and have been for 35 or probably
about 45 years.

LN: You wouldn’t acknowledge that publicly too often would you?

Mark: No, but everyone knows that I’m a Labor person.

Here Mark rejects the notion of objectivity as a method of separating

himself from other ‘objective’ reporters and maintaining some distance from a
management he was critical of. Mark, therefore, acknowledges his subjectivity
and frees himself of concerns about a lack of objectivity by stating that, even
though he had this personal conviction, he was very critical of a particular
state Labor government over certain issues. In this way he acknowledges that
objectivity in news is still held up as possible, and also believes that he could
separate his personal beliefs from his role as objective reporter. I have found
from the interviews, however, that the same confidence is not entrusted to
feminism or feminists. Mark notes that if a known feminist were to apply for
a job at the newspaper where he works, she wouldn’t get the job because she
would be pigeonholed as subjective.

Conclusion

There are a range of subject positions taken up by male and female journalists
in relation to ‘feminists’ and ’feminism’. The dominant theme in this research,
however, is one of hostility towards feminists both within and outside the
industry. Interviewees variously consider that feminists have psychological
 North Rejecting the ‘F-word’ 755

problems, are overly emotional, insecure, angry and extreme in their actions
and often pushed their politics ‘too far’. The majority of female interviewees,
young and older, consequently are inclined to downplay any feminist posi-
tion, even though, as Pat’s stories indicate, some take up what I and others
consider a feminist position. The oppositional theme, then, where a woman
takes up a feminist position, is shown by my interviewees to be inconsistent
with ‘being a journalist’. Janet’s excerpt, for example, shows how difficult
it is for women to have and sustain a feminist position in journalism. Other
women, according to Janet, do not want to support or be associated with a
feminist in her newsroom politics.
Why do journalists resist embracing the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’
and reinforce the stereotypes that have been around for years? Why aren’t
journalists more aware of the positive meanings and open to change? Few,
if any journalists want to be publicly aligned with a feminist perspective, es-
pecially female journalists – the repercussion for public disclosure is known
in the industry to stymie careers.4 It is a point that many of the female inter-
viewees noted. This ‘alternative knowledge’ (Lewis et al., 1998: 67) of femi-
nism is understood as irrelevant to journalism and indeed as impinging on
journalistic objectivity. But people’s identity positions are strategic (Jeffreys,
1991). That is, according to Sue Lewis et al. (1998: 61), ‘they construct, change
and deploy their notions of who they are in order to achieve their chosen goals
in a variety of contexts’. It is my experience that there are many women in the
industry who hold feminist beliefs, but rather than construct their identities
around feminism or label their often private concerns as feminist – already
alert to a fear or misunderstanding of feminism by the dominant newsroom
culture – they merely attempt to fit in, rather than challenge dominant
orthodoxies. Indeed, it has been a strategy that I too have employed at various
times, exhausted by constant battles in the newsroom. Journalists are a part
of the mix that produce hostile (and other) media representations of femi-
nism, but, importantly, journalists also shape the experiences of feminists in
the newsroom.

Notes

1 Elsewhere (North, 2004) I have argued that journalists’ understanding of ‘femi-

nism’ and ‘feminists’ doesn’t necessarily always negatively affect news content.
There can be overt criticism of a feminist position by news sources and colleagues
within the newsroom, yet the published outcome of some news stories that
could be considered feminist can be read as ‘successful’. One doesn’t determine
the other fully, or predictably.
756 Journalism 10(6)

2 Cynthia Cockburn’s 1991 British study of how retail industry workers understand
feminists, or ‘women libbers’, is important because it resonates with the views
of my interviewees. Cockburn was told that ‘women libbers’ were ‘harsh’,
‘strident’, ‘demanding’, ‘uptight’, ‘aggressive’, ‘vociferous’, ‘dogmatic’, ‘radical’,
‘zealots’, ‘crusaders’ and ‘overly ambitious’ (1991: 165). Not surprisingly then,
they also ‘lacked humour’ – a comment that retains common currency today,
seemingly across western countries, and is reinforced in my interview excerpts.
3 Sexual harassment of female journalists, however, is not confined to news sources
or to female sports reporters, as much feminist media scholarship indicates.
Many female journalists experience sexual harassment during their careers;
often, however, there is a resistance to naming it as such (North, 2007).
4 Reporter Richard Yallop (2004: 41, 43) makes this point in his coverage of a legal
challenge by a female reporter of sex discrimination at The Age newspaper.

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Biographical note

Louise North is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of Journalism at Monash University.
Her first book The Gendered Newsroom: How Journalists Experience the Changing World
of Media was published by Hampton Press, 2009. Louise has lectured in media studies,
gender studies and journalism studies. She is also a regional research co-ordinator for
the global media study ‘Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media’.
She has worked in the print media in Australia for 19 years.
Address: School of Humanities, Communications and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts,
Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Northways Road, Churchill, Victoria 3842,
Australia. [email: northlouise@hotmail.com]