Gender Equity and Mass Communication's Female Student Majority

Abstract

Female students have been the majority in mass communication for nearly twenty-five years. Yet rarely are these women the focus of mass communication discussion. Other pressing diversity issues occupy us, such as the representation of women and minorities in the media and media careers, the status of women and minority faculty, and Standard 12 diversity compliance for the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. But, for some reason, our majority constituents have failed to capture our scholarly imaginations, despite their presence in our classrooms. A decade ago, Ramona Rush argued, If those of us in higher education and the media professions make a systemic and systematic commitment to equity we could arrive in the 21st century being all that we can be. 1 Now, as AEJMC's Commission on the Status of updates Rush, Oukrop, and Ernst's landmark 1972 study on women in journalism education, we should consider the women who are our students. In addition to underscoring our inattention to female students,2 this essay serves several purposes: to provide an overview of the history and politics of to make problematic the phrase gender equity, to introduce the equity in education literature, and to outline some issues relevant to mass communication. Gender Equity in Education Educational sex discrimination became illegal in 1972 when Congress passed Title IX of the Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act. Under the 1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act, Title IX states, No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program of activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Since 1972, equity has remained a marginal, though highly politicized, education issue. Many believe coeducation renders equity moot. Gender equity advocates observe disparities or bias in professional and career education; math, science, and technology education; standardized testing; athletics; sexual harassment policies; treatment of student sexuality and parenting; curriculum and instructional material; and classroom interaction.3 Detractors argue discrimination data are unreliable and don't generalize. Some conservatives and anti-feminists dismiss equity scholarship as radical politics. Other critics feel Title IX not only fails to help females but also hurts men's sports. During the same period, national education reform calling for increased standards and accountability virtually has ignored equity since the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its report, A Nation at Risk, in 1983.4 The Reagan Administration, goaded by the New Right, all but dismantled the 1974 Women's Educational Equity Act by under-funding its programming component into paralysis.5 Today, by and large, teacher education does not teach issues, students resist studying gender, and professors feel uninformed and ill-equipped to deal with the topic and the resistance it generates.6 Education research and teacher training, grounded in social science and suspicious of critical pedagogy, rarely address social constructionism, the symbolic nature of language and communication, or critical, queer, race, and feminist theories. Furthermore, third wave feminisms, reminding us of diversity among women, mostly are absent in academic and activist equity work. Even so, equity in education has a rich but underutilized literature. in Mass Communication Education Meanwhile, female students in mass communication continue to increase in number. first became mass communication's undergraduate majority in 1977.7 By 1999, women comprised nearly 62% of undergraduates, 63% of master's students, and 56% of doctoral students in mass communication.8 Women dominate in enrollments at all levels of journalism and mass communications and are more dominant than in other fields, on average, at the university. …