Why does the absence of women occur in the Japanese journalism?

Results from an investigation into the sport editors.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the reason why there are only a few women journalists in the sport department and why there are quantitative and qualitative gender differences in the sport coverage in Japanese newspapers. Questionnaires to sport editors were conducted, and 42 editors answered them. The 42 respondents all turned out to be men and the results show that women journalists only account for 9.0% and women editors are only 1.5%, which suggests that the sport coverage hardly reflects decisions made by women. The main reasons why the number of the women sport journalists do not increase are that the job of being a sports journalist is very difficult and women are not seen as physical fit as men. Secondly, women traditionally carry the responsibility for housework and childrearing. Thirdly, they do not want to be sport journalists themselves. The forth reason is men tend to dominate the sport world and sport journalism. On the other hand, male editors expect female journalists to write articles from the view point of women because recently interest in women’s sports is increasing. Also, the male editors answered that if they complete their work as sport journalists, the gender of the writers is not important. Concerning the gender differences in the sport coverage, it was suggested that the structure of male predominance in sport, for example that the big professional sports are only for men, is reflected upon the process of the article production. Some of the male editors even insisted that gender neutrality of sport coverage is still kept because it suited the reader's interest.