Is there a gender glass ceiling at ‘Allied Newspaper Ltd’?

Abstract

This study investigates the participation of women of Allied Newspaper Ltd. It aims to discover whether there is a glass ceiling in status or in content coverage within the company. It also researches whether the situation at Allied Newspaper Ltd in Malta reflects the problems outlined faced by women in other countries. Ten participants from varying levels within the management and editorial structure of the organisation were chosen to partake in the study; seven females and three males. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were utilised to collect the opinions of the participants in order to analyse the situation. The research found that female journalists encounter a glass ceiling which is not brought on by their male colleagues but rather by society in general, a society which does not facilitate the inclusion of women in the labour market as it still considers them to be mainly responsible for the children and hence they fail to excel in their career. Furthermore, coverage of hard news is usually assigned to men and even though most women prefer writing about human interest stories, they believe that they are not given enough opportunity to cover stories of a political nature. This remains a male-dominated area. Nonetheless, the female reporters at Allied Newspaper Ltd refuse to be classified as soft news reporters, stating that plenty of stories they cover unrelated to politics could also be classified as hard news such as death and crime. The women interviewed say that they do not feel there is a glass ceiling present but that work is divided according to what is considered to be more feasible for the organisation. Until family responsibilities are shared equally by both parents, women will always be at a disadvantage with less time available to allocate towards their professional career.