A Nobel Prize Winner & Women in the Media
FemWealth Issue #32
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
In 2020, just 25% of news sources and subjects were women. The percentages are even lower for news topics such as politics, business, technology, and even healthcare.
The media industry, especially at executive levels, continues to be male-dominated. Women are raising the ranks or founding their own media organization and thriving to level the playing field and amplify women's voices worldwide. Nevertheless, according to the Global Media Monitoring Project, at the current pace, it will take at least 67 years to close the average gender equality gap in traditional news media.
Today's edition of FemWealth shines a light on the journalists and media executives who stand up for the freedom of expression and the press, amplify the voices of women and underrepresented groups, and change the traditional media industry:
Maria Ressa, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Co-founder and CEO of Rappler
“This ‘us against them’ was never the creation of the journalists, it was the creation of the people in power who wanted to use a type of leadership that divides society.”
Maria Ressa, the 18th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in its 120-year history and the only woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in 2021, is a Philippine journalist who has spent decades working as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent. She is the CEO of Rappler, a Philippine-based digital media company for investigative journalism, which she co-founded in 2012 with three fellow female journalists.
Ressa has been a critical voice on terrorism, the authoritarian transgressions of the Duterte government, and the role of social media in disseminating disinformation. Despite facing multiple threats, criminal charges, and two arrests, she continued to be a fearless defender of freedom of expression.
She was awarded the Nobel prize jointly with Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Ressa has emphasized that her Nobel prize is for ‘all journalists around the world.’ Her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator will be published next year.
Like Ressa, countless other journalists and media executives speak truth to power and amplify women’s voices. Here are the ones whose work I follow:
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s Chief International Anchor, Host of CNN International and PBS's nightly global affairs program | The Power of Truth-Telling
Clarissa Ward, War Journalist, CNN Chief International Correspondent and author of On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist
Souad Mekhennet, Correspondent for Washington Post covering national security, Middle East, North Africa, terrorism, Europe, and author of the memoir “I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad”
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-In-Chief of The Economist, the first woman to hold the position
Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, Guardian News & Media | Katharine Viner on women in journalism - A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
Gillian Tett, Chair of FT Editorial Board (US), co-founder of FT Moral Money, anthropologist, author of Anthro-Vision, The Silo Effect, Fool’s Gold, Saving the Sun
Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-chief of Fortune, the first female in the business magazine's 92-year history | Check out Fortune’s The Broadsheet, co-authored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman
Melissa Bell, Co-Founder of Vox and Publisher of Vox Media & Swati Sharma, Editor-in-Chief of Vox
Morgan DeBaun, Media CEO and Founder of Blavity Inc | How I built Blavity, a media empire for Black millennials
Emma Barnett, Chief presenter of BBC Woman’s Hour, a radio programme about ‘women's voices and women's lives’ and author of It’s About Bloody Time. Period | Her co-presenter is Anita Rani, and RTS Award winning broadcaster and author of The Right Sort of Girl | Woman's Hour has been on the air since 1946
June Sarpong OBE, Broadcaster, writer, a campaigner on diversity issues, Director of Creative Diversity at BBC, author of Diversify, The Power of Women and The Power of Privilege
Moira Forbes, Executive Vice President of Forbes Media and President and Publisher of ForbesWomen, a multi-media platform dedicated to successful women in business and leadership. & Maggie McGrath, Editor of ForbesWomen, and editor of Forbes’ 50 Over 50 and the World's 100 Most Powerful Women
Kara Swisher, “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well liked journalist,” host of The NYT podcast "Sway" & Vox podcast "Pivot, co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode
Emily Chang, Host of Bloomberg Technology & Studio 1.0. and author of Brotopia
Julia Leeb, Journalist, photographer, and filmmaker specialised in the production of VR content | How War Photographer Julia Leeb Is Using Virtual Reality and Art to Let Comfortable People Experience the Terror of Conflict Zones
“I hope that virtual reality, a technology in its infancy, can revolutionize journalism and make the world a better place. The world is getting smaller and smaller. It concerns us all. A conflict in Africa today can be a European conflict tomorrow.”
Amy Lewin, Deputy editor at Sifted, co-author of the newsletter Startup Life
Helen Lewis, Staff writer at the Atlantic, author of Difficult Women and The Bluestocking newsletter, presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Spark
Paola Ramos, Host and correspondent for VICE and VICE News, a contributor to Telemundo News and MSNBC, and author of “Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity”
Caroline Criado Perez, Journalist, broadcaster, and award-winning feminist campaigner, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, and the newsletter Invisible Women
Katrine Marçal, Financial Journalist at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, author of MOTHER OF INVENTION: How Good Ideas Get Ignored In An Economy Built For Men and of the newsletter The Wealth of Women
Neema Roshania Patel, Editor of Washington Post’s The Lily, a newsletter that elevates critical stories about women and gender
Learn more about Women in the Media [additional resources].
Who are the journalists you follow?
FemWealth Favorites ❤️
💸 Tala, founded by Shivani Siroya, Raises $145 Million Series E To Expand Account And Crypto Capabilities
💸 Space Perspective, co-founded by Jane Poynter, Raises $40m to Bring Tourists to Space
👩🏾⚕️ Meet The Sudanese Doctor Who Turned Nurse Staffing On Its Head - Incredible Health, a marketplace co-founded and led by Iman Abuzeid, helps nurses find permanent positions and is already profitable
💰Meet the sisters who quit their jobs to build ‘The Duolingo of finance’ - Margot and Alexia de Broglie have launched Juno, a gamified 'financial literacy' app for women
💸 Chitra Nayak and Sruthi Ramaswami have launched Neythri Futures Fund, a $10 million vehicle focused on investing in women co-founded startups
🚀Guud Launches with €350K in Pre-seed Funding to Grow Its Platform for Menstrual Health
👩🏾 WHO honors Henrietta Lacks, a Black American whose cells were taken without consent and used in vaccine research
We gotta change these:
💊 Health care routinely fails women. Blame ‘bikini medicine’
💸 In a Banner Year for VC, Women Still Struggle to Get Funding
👩🏽💻 The Digital Gender Gap - Countries have missed out on $1 trillion USD in GDP as a result of women’s exclusion from the digital world.
Thank you for reading FemWealth! Wish you a lovely Sunday and a successful week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer at FemWealth
chère Anamaria, tu m'étonnes car je ne connaissais pas cette compétence à écrire. Bravo, vraiment bien. Amicalement. Pierrette