The gendered and sexualized
relationship between Israeli
women journalists and their male
news sources
᭿ Einat Lachover
Tel Aviv University, Israel
A B S T R A C T
This article studies the ways in which the interactions between female Israeli journalists
and their male news sources are gendered and sexually structured. The article is
grounded in feminist critiques of journalism as well as feminist organizational and work
studies and it is based on examination of the narratives of individual experiences of 32
female Israeli journalists, working for 10 newspapers. I set forth the attitudes of the
male sources toward the female journalists as the journalists perceive them, and then
I examine the practices that the journalists adopt in order to cope with these attitudes.
Finally, I both set forth and examine the views that these female journalists express
concerning the legitimacy of their own practices. The research findings illustrate how
gender and sexuality interact in journalism by showing the dynamic character of this
process in organizations. The findings demonstrate that gender and sexuality are key
aspects of the relationship between the female journalists I studied and their male
sources in the Israeli context.
K E Y W O R D S ᭿ female journalists ᭿ feminism ᭿ gender ᭿ journalistic
practices ᭿ news organizations ᭿ news sources ᭿ professionalism ᭿ sexuality
Introduction
Studies of news sources in the field of gendered news research usually focus on
the text of the news, analyzing it in terms of the fact that journalists tend to
rely on white, middle-class, middle-aged, professional male sources and comparing
the different ways male and female sources are represented in the news
(Carter et al., 1998). The present article focuses instead on the process of
producing news. It examines the narratives of the individual experiences of
32 female Israeli journalists who work with male news sources.
Journalism
Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 6(3): 291–311 DOI: 10.1177/1464884905054062
ARTICLE
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In this article, I study the ways in which the interactions between these
female Israeli journalists and their male sources are gendered and sexually
structured. I examine some of the attitudes of these male sources toward the
female journalists as the journalists perceive them, as well as the practices that
journalists adopt in order to cope with those attitudes. Finally, I both set forth
and analyze the views that these female journalists express concerning the
legitimacy of their own practices. The research findings illustrate how gender
and sexuality interact in journalism by showing the dynamic character of this
process in organizations (see also De Bruin and Ross, 2004). The findings
demonstrate that gender and sexuality are key aspects of the relationship
between the female journalists I studied and their male sources in the Israeli
context.
Gender, sex and work organizations
The idea that gender is a constitutive element of social structure has been
enormously influential and it is now quite commonplace to speak of all
manner of social institutions and practices as ‘gendered’. Considerable attention
has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations
(Britton, 2000). Scholars of gendered organizations emphasize how the structure
of major institutions, including the workplace, is gendered in ways that
usually give men certain advantages over women (Acker, 1990; Padavic and
Reskin, 2002).
According to gender scholars, gender is not a distinct phenomenon,
inherent in individuals by virtue of their sex. Instead, the social context affects
how people ‘demonstrate’ gender. In one context, people may ‘demonstrate
femininity’, while in another, when the relevant characteristics of the context
are power and status, the same people may ‘demonstrate masculinity’. If so,
gender is a term that describes a series of interactions that characterizes a
specific gender (Bohan, 1993).
Researchers studying the relationships between gender and work have
examined how ‘employers and workers engage in gender differentiation at
work by making sex salient when it is irrelevant and by acting on sexstereotyped
assumptions’ (Padavic and Reskin, 2002: 14). Acker (1992) further
describes gendered organizations in terms of the kind and extent of mental
work that individuals perform, and of the interactions between women and
men, women and women, and men and men not only among co-workers but
also between workers and outsiders such as clients.
Until recently, sociological analyses of work and organizations have paid
scant attention to sexuality as an influential factor. One explanation for this
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lacuna may derive from the fact that researchers have perceived a contradiction
between sexuality and organizational life. Sexuality tends to be seen as
part of family relations, the private sphere, while organizational matters are
deemed to be determined by economic relations, the public sphere (Oerton,
1996). By now, however, sexuality has entered the realm of the social. According
to Adkins and Merchant (1996), ‘sexualizing the social’ means
the ways in which various aspects of social life – including employment, family
life, representations, politics, identities, and the workings of the law and other
bureaucratic organizations – are built on, and themselves build sexuality.
Other scholars concur that sexuality takes many forms in organizations and
that it must be understood in context as an interplay between organizational
control and individual agency (Williams et al., 1999).
Female journalists and male news sources
The number of women in journalism has risen impressively over the past three
decades (Chambers et al., 2004; Gallagher, 2001; Van Zoonen, 1994) in many
countries around the world. Nevertheless, the notion that some work is for
women and other work is for men (horizontal gender segregation) persists
along with vertical segregation:
women have not yet reached a critical mass in ‘serious’ news beats. Moreover,
they remain a minority in the top management jobs in news organizations,
where a glass ceiling continues to limit women’s promotion to key decisionmaking
positions. (Chambers et al., 2004; see also De Bruin and Ross, 2004)
The growing numbers of women at the lower rungs of the professional
hierarchy and in areas that demand attractive and youthful women, such as
television broadcasting, coincided with key changes in the agendas, styles, and
topics of news.
Women continue to face sexism in the newsroom. Men explicitly objectify
women in order to undermine their confidence and discredit their professionalism.
However, there is little evidence that women have invested much
energy in removing sexual banter from the newsroom (Chambers et al., 2004).
Female journalists also confront sexism outside the newsroom, when they
work in the field with news sources, a crucial element of journalists’ work.
From the beginning of political science’s interest in journalism, numerous
scholars, following upon the heels of sociology and the early newsroom studies,
began to focus on the smallest interactional setting of journalism – the source–
journalist relationship . . . as a way to consider broad questions about journalistic
power and autonomy. (Zelizer, 2004: 150)
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Studies on the topic of sourcing established with a wide degree of consensus
that the practices surrounding this relationship derived from a symbiotic
process in which both parties had much to gain in making news.
The literature about women journalists usually overlooks their relationships
with their news sources or does not explicitly deal with it. Since
journalists tend to rely on male sources (Carter et al., 1998), the relationship of
female journalists with male sources is a notable example of a cross-gendered
relationship. Despite the equality-oriented legislation in Israel and women’s
increasing participation in Israel’s labor force, traditional job segregation still
exists vertically and horizontally. The representation of women at high levels
in different institutions of the state, such as the national parliament and the
government, is quite low (12–13 percent) (Israel Women’s Network, 2002) and
only 13 percent of the permanent soldiers of the Israeli defense force are
women (Lieberman, 1995). Since politics and security issues are the two
important subjects in Israeli public discourse, it is not surprising that studies of
various media in Israel show that most persons interviewed as sources of news
are male and that women as sources of news are still a minority (10–20
percent) (Lavie, 2001; Tidhar, 1988).
Fragmentary evidence on the relationship of female journalists and their
male sources can be found in historic, biographical, and autobiographical
literature, in literature about women who were journalists, and in textbooks
about news reporting. 1
These accounts display patriarchal attitudes that male
news sources hold in common about female journalists, particularly two basic
stereotypes: woman as sex object and woman as weak in character. These same
accounts also indicate how such attitudes make it very difficult for female
journalists to be integrated into the newsroom, to practice their craft, and to
be promoted within the profession.
More systematic accounts of women’s contributions to journalism have
appeared since the mid-1980s. Typically they focus on women journalists who
cover subject areas in which men are dominant: sports and war.2
In these areas,
sources are primarily male and, until very recently, the social situations (sport
competitions and military battles) have been identified with males. That
women journalists have, in the past, rarely appeared in these situations
reinforces the symbolic meaning of any cross-gendered interaction. Academic
studies have consistently demonstrated that male news sources tend to discriminate
against female journalists. For example, a 1987 survey among female
sports journalists for US daily newspapers indicates that over half of them
(58 percent) experienced such discrimination. Almost 20 years ago, women
sportswriters reported that they were often denied access to locker rooms, that
they were sexually harassed, experienced condescension, and had been threatened
physically (Eberhard and Myers, 1988). Interviews a decade later with 19
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US women who cover sports news found no significant change: their male
sources discriminate against them and most reported incidents of sexual
harassment (Cramer, 1994). Similarly, female journalists who covered the
Salvadorian war between 1990 and 1992 complained about discrimination,
derogatory attitudes, and sexual harassment by male sources (Pedelty, 1997).
Women journalists who covered the Gulf War also reported difficulties working
with male sources because of their sex (Robbins in Pedelty, 1997).
Interestingly, there is little evidence in the literature concerning female
journalists and male sources that any non-derogatory conception is held about
women as professional journalists. Studies about female journalists who covered
the Salvadorian (Pedelty, 1997), Bosnian (Ricchiardi, 1994), and Vietnam
(Bartimus et al., 2002) wars indicate that, despite derogatory and sexist
attitudes directed against them by their male sources, some of the women
journalists perceived their femininity as being an advantage: it allowed the
sources to perceive these journalists as unthreatening and, hence, the sources
offered them information.
The study
Sample size and method
The present study focuses on women journalists in print journalism in Israel,
where, as in other countries around the world, many women have entered the
profession, virtually a male-dominated occupation before the 1970s. Caspi and
Limor (1999) indicated that a feminization process in Israeli print and electronic
journalism began in the mid-1970s and has been gaining momentum
since the mid-1980s. The authors found that 37.7 percent of journalists on
daily newspapers in 1996 were women. Likewise, Lachover’s (2000) research,
based on a survey conducted in 1998, found that 37 percent of those working
for daily and local weekly newspapers were women. The increasing number of
women in Israeli journalism since the 1970s can be partly attributed to the
overall feminization of the work force since that decade. Since that time,
public, financial and business services have grown quite considerably. Military
and defense-related needs have also expanded resulting in an increasing
number of men being withdrawn from the civilian sector, thereby reducing
the pool of men available for the civilian economy. Consequently, the participation
of women in the labor force has, as a whole, increased, as has the
proportion of women in several traditionally male professions (Izraeli, 1988).
While the print media in Israel have been undergoing a process of ‘feminization’,
they have also been segregating journalistic labor in terms of the status
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of these positions, their administrative responsibilities, their reporting specializations,
and, not least, their salaries (Lachover, 2000).
This study is based on the semi-structured in-depth interviews I conducted
in 1999 with 32 women journalists working for 10 newspapers, including two
of the three largest daily national newspapers in Israel: Yediot Haaronot and
Haaretz. Yediot Haaronot, the most popular newspaper in Israel, markets the
news by emphasizing drama and human interest over sophisticated analysis.
Haaretz, considered an elite paper in Israel, generally adopts a more serious
approach to the news. Eight other newspapers, local weeklies, represent
different geographic areas in Israel and the two biggest newspaper chains in
Israel round out the sources of my sample.
I selected the interviewees on the basis of maximum variation sampling
(sometimes called ‘maximum diversity’ or ‘maximum heterogeneity’ sampling).
Although this type of sample is not as representative as a random
sample, it can be made to be as representative as a random sample if it is
carefully drawn. I chose this sampling method since the sample size can be
small, as mine was. Using maximum variation sampling, the researcher first
analyzes the potential population to assess the maximum range of sites and
people that constitute the population. In short, I deliberately chose to interview
a widely varying selection of journalists so that their aggregate answers
would represent those of the whole population. According to Seidman (1991:
43), this approach ‘provides the most effective basic strategy for selecting
participants for interview studies’. I drew the sample using sequential sampling
(snowball sampling), using only a few respondents among those suggested
at each source.
The sample population therefore included journalists (a) working at
different newspapers: daily (21) and weekly newspapers (11); (b) at different
levels of professional experience: up to two years (11), between 2 and
10 years (12), and more than 11 years (9); and (c) having different job titles:
reporters (20), editors (3), and senior reporters and editors (9). This selection of
participants reflects the range of categories of journalists in the larger population
under study.
Each interview lasted between one and three hours. In order to encourage
an open and serious atmosphere, I invited each interviewee to choose the
location for the interview. In the newsrooms of two weekly local papers, I
conducted a pilot study that included participant observation and unstructured
interviews with journalists working there. Based on the pilot, I crystallized
the interview plan. I began each interview by asking the interviewee to
tell her personal career story. This step provided some of the background
information I needed and it also created a communication channel between
the interviewee and me. Next, I asked more personal questions that were
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connected to the way in which the interviewee perceives her job, her profession,
her achievements, and the difficulties she confronts. At that stage, I
asked questions dealing with gender issues, such as the journalist’s views
regarding women’s status in the news organization, her view regarding women’s
status in the profession, and the ways in which gender affects different
aspects of her work. I promised anonymity to all interviewees to encourage
them to discuss personal and sensitive issues and I tape-recorded all the
interviews except one (that person was willing to be interviewed but requested
me not to tape-record the interview and, accordingly, I took careful notes
instead), transcribing all of them in full. I have changed the interviewees’
names in order to preserve anonymity. The interviews were conducted in
Hebrew and the translations into English are mine.
Analysis of the interviews
More than one-third of the journalists reported that they now suffer or had in
the past suffered from a discriminatory attitude from their male news sources
because of their sex. The journalists who spoke about this attitude cover
different subject areas of news, not all of which would be considered ‘male’.
The sources manifest this attitude in two main ways: (a) a sexual harassment
that is mainly verbal; and (b) using derogatory language and demeanors that
are already unprofessional and often contemptuous. For example, Edna, a
senior magazine journalist on a local newspaper, reports that her male sources,
especially politicians and public and private organizations’ spokesmen, reply
to her questions in a derogatory manner in spite of her long professional
experience and her good reputation. One source responded to one of her
questions by saying: ‘Do you know what are you talking about?’ The same
source did not treat the new male journalist (who she herself had trained) in
the same way.
Similarly, Tamar, a chief editor of a big local newspaper, recounts:
Many people that I work with, spokesmen for all kinds of institutions, think they
can cheat me more easily if they say to me: puzi, muzi.3
They come from such a
‘male’ background that this kind of behavior is deeply ingrained in them and
they perpetuate it. A guy like the police spokesman thinks that if he calls me
‘mamale’ [little mama]4
three times, everything will be ok. It took him a few times
till he saw that it’s not ok, and then he stopped. But he tried.
Younger female journalists especially express extensive difficulties with male
news sources. Perhaps their youth and often attractive appearance lead male
sources to view them more easily in terms of stereotypes. These journalists feel
frustrated when the sources do not respond seriously to their questions and
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deliberately ignore them. These are some of the behaviors that interviewees
described as sexist.
Although the journalists perceived such acts as expressing a discriminatory
attitude toward women, they avoided categorizing such acts as sexual
harassment, perhaps because explicitly complaining about harassment could
harm them professionally. Besides having to cope emotionally, a woman
journalist who dares to complain can expect to confront many difficulties as
she tries to sustain her relationship with her sources. Although some of the
journalists testify that they sometimes confront the harasser, many do not
consider their behavior to be sexual harassment per se. Given the discrepancy
between experiencing sexual harassment and being willing to recognize specific
behaviors as sexual harassment (an ability that depends on a woman’s
personal vulnerabilities and on her sophistication in recognizing power plays)
(Buzzanell, 2004), it is not surprising that these journalists almost never
complained about being harassed.
By the same token, the journalists do not usually view themselves as
victims; instead, they describe themselves as functioning within a framework
of power relationships. Instead of focusing on the personal meaning of the
harassment they encounter, they speak of it as a routine event that does not
cause them very much discomfort. In fact, they talk about the way that they
cope with the harassment, emphasizing their self-control and what they see as
their power over the harasser: they can choose whether to react to the
harassment or to ignore it. They present their choice as a deliberate decision
that follows from their understanding of their needs as journalists (i.e. if their
work as journalists requires it, they continue to contact a specific source in
order to complete their assignments) and of their emotional ability to tolerate
specific events that they would not endure in their personal lives.
Ayala, a senior woman journalist on a daily newspaper, reports:
A lot of my interviewees are chauvinists, and not only interviewees who serve in
the army. Do you respond to the term ‘Meidale’ [Hebrew slang for: ‘Hey doll’] or
do you not? If I feel nervous, I respond, and if I really need him to continue with
the conversation, I won’t respond. It depends on how much I need [the news].
Look, I’ll have to get back to him later, you see? It’s a bit of a problem. I’m not
complaining. I think I win more [often] than I lose.
This journalist presents her decision of whether or not to respond to the
harassment as one arising within a professional context, namely that of how
she estimates her journalistic needs. She perceives her decision not to react as
expressing her strength, since she believes that she gains more from the
situation than she loses. It is important to notice that these women do not
ignore the political and aggressive nature of the sexual harassment: they
recognize it and they do what they can to change its meaning from men’s
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control over women to women’s control over men. By turning the force of the
meaning back against the men, these women exert self-discipline: they decide
whether, when, and how to respond to the sexual harassment. In other words,
the journalists try to break the structure of the existing gendered relationship
not by denying the harassment but by acknowledging its presence and thereby
taking control of it (instead of responding automatically in any of the more
usual ways).
This feeling of strength that primarily characterizes the relationship that
the women journalists articulate as existing with their male news sources is the
most surprising finding of my study. I analyze it more fully in the following
sections, which describe the stereotypes of women that the women journalists
use to their advantage as journalists, the tactics with which they deploy these
stereotypes, and the resulting ethical problem that they find themselves
dealing with: how to exert their power as women in order to achieve their
professional purposes.
Three male stereotypes of women
According to Kanter (1977), organizations tend to categorize women by certain
stereotypes: as a sexual object, as having a weak character, and as a caring
person. The first stereotype defines women in terms of their sexuality. Men
judge professional women by their appearance more than by their competence,
just as, in the social world, they expect women’s appearance and their
actions in the world of work to conform to cultural views of femininity.
Having a weak character reflects the social view that women are in need of
men’s protection, as though they are children. This stereotype sees women as
less mature than men, certainly as less competent, and/or less capable of
making decisions. Finally, regarding women as inherently caring persons is
valued as a source of comfort and support for men (Wood, 1999).
However, Kanter’s research focused on relationships within organizations.
The study on which I am reporting here differs from hers by broadening the
focus to include relationships between employees and individuals outside the
organization, as well as between employees within it. The picture I found
through my interviewees is much more complex. The female journalists to
whom I spoke did not passively allow men to define their work in terms of the
roles that men tried to impose on them. Instead, these women saw a potential
source of power in the stereotypical roles that their male sources wanted to
impose on them, a power that would give them sufficient advantage to enable
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them to do their work as the professionals that they rightly believe themselves
to be.
Woman as sexual objects
Frequently the journalists I interviewed stated that when they realize that their
male sources are perceiving them as sexual objects, they become aware of a
sexual tension in the relationship that seems to encourage the source to try to
impress them as women by giving them what they needed as journalists. Since
women journalists want exactly what men journalists want – as much information
or as much distinctive information, as possible – male sources
would, in fact, contribute that information in the apparent belief that they
will receive something in exchange. Gal, a young journalist on a weekly
newspaper, demonstrates the interchange:
I visit the mayor’s chamber more often than any other journalist. I arrive at the
press conference and he soon shakes my hand, offers me a cake, serves me coffee,
escorts me outside to the elevator. Being an attractive woman is advantageous.
Something that a guy cannot have . . . As we walk to the elevator, I can wring all
sorts of things out of him, things that he didn’t mention to anyone else [inside
the press conference hall]. So I can’t complain [about having difficulties as a
woman]. I don’t know . . . I’ve heard all kinds of stories about the failures of city
hall [regarding specific matters] that no other journalist heard. Next weekend I
have this amazing article that the guy from Haaretz [the prestigious Israeli daily]
doesn’t have. So why do I need to weep? I don’t weep.
This journalist’s narrative about her sexual advantage is open and unconstrained.
Moreover, editors in newsrooms explicitly discuss these circumstances
when they recruit women and assign them to professional tasks.
Female journalists testify that their attractiveness or that of their associates can
affect whether they are assigned to certain news beats, especially those of city
nightlife and to crime. The decision-makers in newsrooms make no secret of
wanting to capitalize on the attractiveness of these women. Similarly, female
journalists testify that their editors have indirectly suggested to them, and
sometimes even directly ordered, that they appear in appealing clothing at all
their meetings with male sources.
Women as weak
Female journalists, especially younger women, report that, when their male
source treats them as weak or as a child, they recognize that he considers them
to be unthreatening. They also immediately realize that, from then on, it will
be easier for them to obtain information from that source. Men continue to
hold this image of women as being weak even when the journalist is senior,
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very experienced, and has a good reputation. Such men may consider every
male–female relationship to be a relationship between the strong and the
weak, and so they behave with gentleness and sensitivity, ‘the way you should
treat a woman’. Playing along with this stereotype, even famous women
journalists who have already proved themselves to be serious professionals can
obtain information that a male journalist with the same record and achievement
might not get.
Women as motherly
Although only men attribute the other two stereotypes to women, women
themselves attribute the maternal stereotype to other women. Female journalists
are willingly do so because this stereotype is based on characteristics that
both men and women perceive as positive, while the other two stereotypes
have negative connotations. The positive characteristics seem to be that
female journalists see themselves interacting with their sources in a generous
and friendly (motherly) manner while male journalists interact aggressively.
Female journalists are often perceived to have a special talent for encouraging
other people to talk candidly while they themselves listen attentively.
Pre-empting the stereotypes for the workplace
The journalists in my sample often consciously and directly exploit these
stereotypical attitudes of their male news sources by adopting and mastering
tactics that will or can promote their professional aims.
The tactic of flirting
Using the stereotype of being a sexual object, female journalists deliberately
create sexual tension with the male source in order to strengthen their
relationship with him. Usually the tension is only implied and usually the
source initiates it. The women see their part in the game to be that of
preserving and cultivating it. Gal, a young journalist on a weekly newspaper,
clearly views her role as being passive as she talks about this tactic:
Gal: I didn’t sleep with [him] I think what I did was more flirting with them. I
knew how to play with that.
E.L.: What do you mean?
Gal: It means you play all sorts of games on the phone, kind of play to this
tension, to be nice. I internalized the message . . . There were men who
hinted to me in all directions . . . I didn’t put them in their place because I
thought this tension was useful to me. I knew that they will not get what
they want. They would not get me into bed with them. It [the flirting] will
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motivate them to give me information and to stay in touch with me . . . You
cultivate this kind of tension.
The journalists in my study also tend to use a seemingly paradoxical strategy
of erasing their femininity at times. They do this by not enhancing their
feminine appearance: they do not wear clothes that are revealing or too tight,
despite sometimes being encouraged by their bosses to do so. They feel that, in
a face-to-face meeting with a male source, they should be careful about their
appearance by not dressing in too feminine a way so that the man will not
misunderstand their intentions. Galit, a young reporter on a weekly newspaper,
describes covering a trial:
In court . . . many people hang around and they are not usually polite. So I wear
modest clothes, no undershirt, no heels, pants instead of a skirt, and the pants
not too tight. In some way you are neutralizing your femininity a little bit in
order to feel comfortable there. Many people [are there], and many people brush
against you, because it’s crowded, and there are some who deliberately brush up
against you. It’s not a nice feeling.
Navigating between creating sexual tension and placing strict boundaries on it
is good evidence that the feelings of control and power that the female
journalists describe are genuine.
Smadar, a senior journalist on a local newspaper, clearly exemplifies this
use of sexuality as female power. Although her male source is in a position of
strength by virtue of his high social status and his economic circumstances, his
stereotypical attitude to women puts him in a position of weakness that she
very easily and cynically exploits:
There are interviewees in positions of power. Mostly I like men who have power.
It [the interaction] always starts man–woman. I flirt, I flatter his ego. I know men
and what works with them. If the interviewee is a man, first of all I flirt . . . I pay
attention to personal things: his haircut, his eyes. ‘What have you done?’ ‘What
are your successes?’ What boundaries do I place? I won’t go out with him to
drink, not at all. If he falls in the trap and he thinks that because I want to
interview him, maybe he’ll get something . . . he’s wrong.
Some of the women perceived the flirtation tactic as being ‘professional’:
they have adopted it for their work but it is not part of their social behavior
outside of work. Others also use it as a tactic in their personal relationships.
Only one journalist suggested that she uses this tactic in her private life but
not when she is working, because she thinks it demeans her professional
identity.
The ‘help me’ tactic
With this tactic, the journalist allows herself to appear stupid and links her
‘weakness’ to her lack of experience and to her youth. She thus seems to
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denigrate herself and to enhance the power of the male source. Pretending
that she does not understand the subject that she is working on, the journalist
presents herself as one who needs the source’s explanation and guidance.
Shlomit, a senior journalist, explains how this tactic works:
I have never said: ‘Look, I’m terribly dumb; maybe you can explain it to me.’ I try
to reach him using a smile. ‘Please explain it to me . . .’. You apply something that
they [the male sources] understand more instinctively than they understand
what a woman is doing here. ‘Why is she interfering with us?’ They do understand
this: here is this woman, she has this mission, and she must return [to her
editor] with an article, so I’ll do her a favor and explain it to her. You really need
to adjust yourself to what is working.
Using the tactic of childishness, the journalist presents herself, as someone
who needs the source’s protection in order to diminish the threat that he
perceives her to be. Noga, a young but experienced journalist, tells how using
this gave her access to places that are usually closed to journalists, male and
female both.
The prime minister’s chamber is [for] a typically men’s gang. I acted completely
like a child. After a few times [of doing that and succeeding], I reached the
conclusion that the only way I’ll get materials [I need] is to pretend. Seven
hundred guards used to accompany the prime minister, they would push all
journalists aside, but I’d attach myself to [a senior employee in the prime
minister chamber], and say, ‘Are you taking care of me?’ I’d get wherever I
wanted [to go].
Mastering the different tactics
Some of the journalists used all the tactics, moving among them as a situation
seemed to require, thus proving to themselves their dominance and activism
in their relationship with their male sources. The way they discuss their
mastery of these tactics also reveals that they themselves perceive it as an
expression of power. Lea, a local newspaper editor, praises very highly the skill
with which one of her colleagues uses the different tactics to her advantage.
There was a reporter here. She was an ace in that she knew how to play with each
[interviewee] any game that would help her milk the source . . . She was very
young. When necessary she played the little innocent girl and being vulnerable.
. . . When she needed to, she was the beautiful woman, tempting and sexy . . .
and she always knew how to move among the different characters, and sometimes
she would be two characters at the same time. She was simply . . . I take off
my hat, she was a queen.
Analyzing the discourse of the journalists reveals that they choose which
character to play on the basis of three factors: first, the characteristics of the
source with whom the journalist needs to interact; second, the characteristics
of the specific situation; and third, the woman journalist’s own personality.
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Not all the journalists could play at being every character. Some found it
difficult to play one character or another, both because of their own personality
and because they do not approve of using the tactic. Ayala, a field
reporter, said that in her past she used to play the weak woman very well,
especially by pretending to be childish, but that she could not play the
tempting woman:
I didn’t play the ‘Meidale’, but I did play the innocent. . . . ‘I’m a girl, I’m not
threatening you.’ While I worked in the territories5
I was mainly the innocent. I
must say: for religious men and Arab men, this is the woman’s pattern they are
familiar with. It was convenient to play [the innocent], but I didn’t like to play
the ‘Meidale’ and the sexually tempting [woman]. I’m just not good at this. I
wasn’t so good at this as a woman anyway, being courted and all that stuff. I am
good at playing the innocent. Orthodox and Arab men, whom I used to work
with a lot at the time, love it and it opens them up.
Ayala was one of the few journalists who mentioned that she was not good in
playing the tempting character either in her personal life or in her professional
life.
All these examples confirm that these women are familiar with the full
variety of tactics and choose among them, as they need them. Only a few were
clever enough or sufficiently self-assured to choose whether to use a certain
tactic based solely on what best suited the specific circumstances. Others were
unwilling to use certain of the tactics under any circumstances.
When expectations based on gender emerge at the workplace, Nieva and
Gutek (1981) call the phenomenon ‘sex-role spillover’. Nieva and Gutek
focused on the seeming inferiority of women to men in the workplace: since
women lack control over how men perceive them, men who persistently view
women as sexual objects thereby compel women to feel a deep conflict
between their femininity and their professionalism. Furthermore, the process
the researchers described does not envisage the possibility that women or men
can ever change sex roles. So, while, the relationship between the female
Israeli journalists and their male sources seems to confirm Nieva and Gutek’s
notion of spillover to the workplace, the female journalists perceive their
relationship with their male news sources differently. The Israeli women do
identify the controlling element in their relationship with male sources but,
far from accepting the inferior role that is assigned to them in the power
structure, they try to upset it by using the traditional stereotypes to their own
advantage.
Unlike the women journalists in my study, women in Gutek’s (1989)
studies usually do not report intentionally using their sexuality for professional
goals. Perhaps the goal of the Israeli journalists differs from that of
the women in Gutek’s studies, which focused on how women use their
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sexuality in winning promotions within an organization. Using sexuality for
this kind of bonus is apparently less legitimate than using it as the Israelis did
because promotions are a material reward, they are often won at another’s
expense, and they are highly visible. In contrast, the Israeli women journalists
used their sexuality to forward their professional goals, which they perceived
as being a legitimate purpose even though indirectly it serves to help them get
promoted. Furthermore, getting the most (or best) news does not hurt other
employees (at least not directly) and it is less visible than being promoted. Of
course, the journalists in my study were not reporting about using their
femininity in their relationships with colleagues and superiors in order to gain
their ends within their own newsroom.
Another, less prominent strategy emerged from my study: women who
blurred their femininity. Women did so by adopting masculine clothing and
behavior. Galit, the journalist who earlier remarked about being brushed up
against in courtrooms, told this story:
I met someone – a prisoner’s parent – and sat with him. She [another journalist
who happened to be in the courtroom and observed the meeting] said to me . . .
[that] she was hypnotized. She told me that I’m a different person [from the
friend she knows]. She told me: ‘You completely spoke his language.’ I don’t
smoke but I smoked half a cigarette with him, and I drank black coffee6
with him,
and we were like buddies from the neighborhood. From the moment I get out of
car when I arrive at work, I’m not the same. I’m more aggressive. My boyfriend
says that when I return home after working long days, it takes me an hour until
I am back to myself . . . After all, I’m a gentle woman. I need this costume [in
order to do my job as a journalist].
By blurring her femininity, this journalist appears to want to break the
dichotomy brought about by male uses of gender and, in this way, to reduce
the tension that women journalists are forced to experience between their
feminine values and their professional values. This strategy does not necessarily
make the tension easier but only limits its impact in certain cases. Galit
adopted a manly appearance in order to express her professionalism but, when
one of the male sources speaks of her as ‘one of the boys’, she feels that her
womanhood is insulted.
The legitimacy of using one’s sexuality: professionalism versus feminism
Since the journalists expressed their sense of their own power and their
confidence by using these strategies in their interaction with male news
sources, I expected that they would discuss at length and openly the legitimacy
of using them. That was not the case.
The women I interviewed discussed the legitimacy of using their femininity
only in the context of using sexuality to achieve professional goals. This
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discourse expresses the feminist and professional perceptions of the journalists
in my study. From a feminist point of view, these women justify using their
sexuality because it allows them to correct the imbalance in the power
relations that exist between men and themselves. The journalists compared
their tactic of using their sexuality with the tactic that men journalists use
with other men: they are ‘brothers in arms’. The journalists in my study
legitimize using their sexuality because male and female journalists have
unequal opportunities in their relationships with their news sources. They
seem to have concluded early in their careers that using their sexuality in this
(or some other) way can right the balance in their professional relationships.
Noga, a senior woman journalist on a national daily newspaper, says:
Noga: I can tell you, as a woman reporter, that I did use my femininity. In my
opinion, it was legitimate, because there were other things that I couldn’t
do. I couldn’t sit together with [the sources] in their reserve service and fart7
,
so I had to use something else . . . I used my femininity because I thought
that it gave me an advantage over my male colleagues, who have their own
advantages . . . I can’t tell you that I really liked it.
E.L.: Was it easy for you to play this game or have you acquired this ability over
time?
Noga: I closed my eyes and took an anti-disgust pill.
Other journalists in my study justified using the tactic without feeling a
need to compare their action with those of male journalists. The women
simply seemed to think that this is a ‘natural’ tool. Smadar, a reporter on a
weekly newspaper, says:
I have never had a conflict [regarding using my sexuality]. If you have a man that
you must deal with, you want to tempt him; you want to make him tell you his
life story in two hours. So what will you do? So I have my own tools for
[interactions between] a woman and a man. I don’t have other tools; I don’t have
any other tool, or really anything else. This is what I have, and it works
wonderfully.
As these quotations demonstrate, the journalists in my study do not
explicitly define the tactic in feminist terms. They neither use the term
‘feminism’ nor do they cite feminist scholars or activists to justify what they
do. Similarly, the journalists do not explicitly mention the argument against
them that the use of female sexuality is not a feminist act. Perhaps the level of
feminist awareness of the women in my study is low. Nor do the women
journalists elaborate on the professional implications of using this tactic. Most
of them justify its use so long as it does not replace good professional work.
Nurit, a senior editor on a national daily newspaper, says:
It [the sexual tactic] doesn’t remove the demand for being prepared as best as she
can, or for studying the archive and studying the person and getting to know him
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well. But if you arrive [at the interview] with all that, [using this tactic] gives you
an additional value.
Noga, a reporter on a daily newspaper, is not proud of using her sexuality in
her work but she believes that it is professionally necessary to do so:
I can’t say I’m very proud of it. I’d like to meet a woman reporter who would tell
me that she had never used [her femininity], or anything else, but I couldn’t
believe her. I think that, at one time, or another, everyone finds herself behaving
in that way.
For most of the journalists in my study, the issue of their relationship with
male sources is not so emotionally loaded but three of the younger journalists
perceived it as the most difficult issue in their professional lives. For Gal, the
reporter on the local weekly, it is the main reason that she decided to move
from a job reporting hard news to a job writing features. In her new job of
writing for a magazine, she feels less pressure to be concerned with what she
calls ‘the flirting issue’, because the relationships with her sources are for short
periods only. From this perspective, one might hypothesize that using one’s
sexuality in order to better meet the requirements of one’s job as a journalist
(when one is a woman) is necessary only when one must preserve continuing
contact with one’s (male) news sources.
Conclusion
I begin drawing my conclusions by pointing out that I found no differences
among the female journalists I interviewed in the use of such tactics, no matter
whether they worked for daily or weekly local newspapers; no matter their
levels of professional experience; and no matter the variances in their job
titles. In contrast, I found that the field of journalism in which the female
journalist specializes might affect the nature of the gendered and sexual
relationship between female journalists and their sources. In the past, men
primarily covered crime stories. However, an increasing number of women in
Israel have been entering the field of crime reporting over the past few years.
Here, too, however, men are the primary sources of information: criminal
lawyers, police, jailers, and criminals, all of whom are used to masculine forms
of communication. In addition, the usual context for this kind of reporting is
identified as ‘male’: courts, police stations, jails, and the crime situation in
which an arrest occurs. Women seem to be assigned to cover crime only when
their editors think their gender makes them more likely to get useful information.
The interaction between female Israeli journalists and their male sources
is a dynamic process. It occurs in a broad range of contexts and circumstances,
affecting and affected by the personal characteristics of the female journalists
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as well as their male sources. As Oerton (1996: 29) suggests: ‘Gender and
sexuality are not stable or cohesive elements of work and organizational life,
but provide the dynamics upon which power relations are mapped out’.
The feminist theoretician Judith Butler suggests using the term performativity
instead of speaking in terms of sexual and gendered identity. To her,
performativity means that gender cannot be understood as a role which either
expresses or disguises an interior ‘self’, whether that ‘self’ is conceived as sexed
or not. As performance which is performative, gender is an ‘act’, broadly
construed, which constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority
(Butler, 1990: 279). If we use Butler’s terms to interpret how the
journalists in my study interact with their male sources, we can say that, in
that relationship, which rests on power and status, men tend to act in
stereotypical masculine ways toward the female journalists and, as such, these
men provoke the women into acting in stereotypical feminine ways. In the
case of Israeli journalists, however, women merely pretend to act in the expected
way, by deliberately using the same feminine stereotypes against the
male sources in order to achieve their own goals.
My study also reinforces the claim of Williams et al. (1999) that sexuality
takes many forms in organizations and that it must be understood in context
as interplay between organizational control and individual agency. In the
Israeli newsrooms that employed my interviewees, sexuality appears to be a
key aspect of any relationship that a female journalist establishes with her
male sources of news. Since sometimes Israel is considered to be a sexually
discriminatory society (Mayer, 1994), a cross-cultural study that includes Israel
might, therefore, provide interesting results.
By almost any criteria, perceiving one’s femininity, in general, and perceiving
one’s sexuality, in particular, as a personal and professional resource is
a political act. The journalists in my study can, therefore, be viewed as trying
to break down the separation between the private sphere and the public sphere
by shifting into the public sphere some practices now widely accepted in the
private. This effort confirms Mills’ (1989) theory which emphasizes the dynamic
character of the gendered process in organizations. According to Mills,
women do not take a passive role in this process: they can resist or challenge
the existing social forms, beginning with a revolt and ending by creating
feminine subcultures that range from establishing women’s organizations to
creating an oppositional culture, from challenging the law to criticizing the
analysis of male dominance in the workplace.
Similar claims regarding sexuality can be found in the literature. According
to Oerton (1996), sexuality can offer women workers resources for resistance
as well as means for dominance and control. The female journalists in my
study do not challenge their male sources directly and overtly. Their challenge
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begins by seeming to accept the existing order (Bohan, 1993), even though the
journalists then subvert that order by turning male power back against itself.
This type of confrontation cannot lead to genuine social change. The female
journalists in my study are rewarded by their news organizations employing
feminine tactics because they result in obtaining more and sometimes exclusive
information. As such, these tactics can prove to be useful to women in
achieving their professional goals. Nevertheless, such skirmishes have minimal
impact on changing wider social perceptions of how gendered power is or
‘ought to be’ distributed in society.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on my PhD dissertation submitted to Tel Aviv University.
I would like to thank my mentors Professor Dafna Lemish and Professor Akiba
Cohen for their professional and personal support during the years. I am also
indebted to Professor Linda Steiner from Rutgers University for her insightful
and helpful suggestions.
Notes
1 For example, see Steiner (1992, 1997).
2 For examples of male sexual attitudes toward female journalists in sport, see
Cramer (1994); for examples of male sexual attitudes toward female journalists in
battle areas, see Pedelty (1997).
3 A Hebrew slang expression that means ‘flirtatious talk’.
4 A Hebrew slang expression that means ‘a sweaty’.
5 Territories: the occupied areas in Israel.
6 Black coffee is more popular than instant coffee among Israeli men, while Israeli
women prefer instant coffee.
7 In a cynical way, the speaker is saying that she cannot be part of men’s
activities.
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Biographical note
Einat Lachover teaches at the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University
and at The School of Communication at Sapir College, Israel.
[email: einat@consonet.com].
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