5 ways to help foster a gender-diverse newsroom that you probably haven’t thought of

The latest calculations of women and minorities in newsrooms are here, and there were no surprises for those of us who live in the world of journalism. The percentage of women in newsrooms has barely moved since 2001 and people of color fared not much better.

How we got here, of course, is complicated and byzantine. To be fair, it is not completely a manifestation of newsrooms’ stunted hiring practices. But nearly everyone in journalism today can accept some blame for not thinking deeply about our own roles in propagating the segregation of our profession.

Now that you’ve read the lamenting and pondering, consider something actionable. Here are five ways anyone in newsrooms can help chip away at things that hurt efforts to diversify our mostly male newsrooms.

1.Rid your staff of men who can’t work with women professionally. There is a spectrum here, ranging from men who feel uncomfortable with women in the workplace, to men who should not be left alone with an intern. Every profession has the quiet sexists, the creepy leches and the inappropriate, power-imbalanced relationships. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Time to stop rolling your eyes or looking away, and confront those situations.

2. Be aware of the mean girl syndrome and eradicate it. Sometimes we meet the enemy and we find it’s us. An ugly byproduct of tokenism in the workplace is that the “token” feels constantly threatened by other potential tokens who might replace her on her precarious perch. Women in a non-diverse newsroom need to support each other. And effective newsroom leaders will support and foster those relationships.

3. Use your budget to send men to leadership training. Here’s an aggravating response to the lack of women leaders in the newsroom: Sending women to women-only leadership workshops. Think about that. Why is there an assumption that something is lacking in those women? Who allowed the newsroom to become segregated in the first place? Precious training budgets should be used to send those managers to learn more about the need for diversity and how to lead a diverse workforce.

4. Absolutely refuse to attend, sponsor or speak at a conference session that is all-male. Be proactive and offer your “binders full of women” (you have those ready, right?) to conference organizers. And if you walk into a newsroom meeting where only men are in attendance, stop the meeting and address the bull elephant in the room. Have a discussion. Are there women who should be in the room but aren’t? Why and how did this happen? How can you keep it from happening again?

5. Finally, don’t deflect your responsibility as a member of the journalism industry. Even non-managers can do something about the diversity imbalance in news organizations. (See everything above.) And if you’re the manager? Maybe you should have done something years ago. Make up for it now.

All photos Flickr Creative Commons.