The glass ceiling for women journalists in Italy feels unbreakable. What can be done? 

News media is still riddled by a huge problem of gender inequality.

According to a report titled Women and leadership in the news media 2024, published by the Reuters Institute of Journalism, only 24% of the top 174 editorial positions across 240 news organisations in 12 markets are held by women (a 2% increase from 2023 report). This is despite the fact that, on average, 40% of journalists in these markets are women. 

In Italy, too, the situation is similar. Women journalists make up 42% of the total of about 15,000 journalists, according to data from AGCOM, the Italian Communications Authority. But women still tend to be underrepresented in journalistic leadership. The only three women newspaper editors in Italy out of over 30 major outlets are Agnese Pini, editor of the newspapers published by Editoriale Nazionale (La Nazione, Quotidiano Nazionale, Il Resto del Carlino, and Il Giorno), Stefania Aloia, editor of the Genoa daily newspaper Il Secolo XIX, and Nunzia Vallini, editor of Il Giornale di Brescia. 

And it’s not just about a lack of women in leadership. For the 42% of women in journalism, things are equally difficult. As an industry, news media is rife with a patronizing culture where women’s voices and perspectives are often ignored and their rights are disregarded. Work environments can be sexist and women journalists are often subjected to online as well as offline harassment.

Italy’s political scene hasn’t helped either – a factor that significantly affects the world of journalism. While Giorgia Meloni is the first woman to lead a government in Italian history and is also a former journalist, her policies and demeanour have been particularly hostile towards both women and journalists.

We spoke with multiple women journalists, across three different roles, to understand their struggles, document their experiences and prepare a guide as to how they are all navigating this male-dominated industry. 

The freelancers

In general, the conditions for freelance journalism in Italy are extremely complicated. There are few pitch calls, little transparency, and the rates offered are low. About 45 percent of Italian freelance journalists earn less than 5,000 euros per year, according to a 2020 report by AGCOM.

Sara Manisera is a freelance reporter, a Bertha Fellow 2023 and the founder of an Italian collective of journalists called FADA. Being a freelance journalist, Manisera tells The Fix, has allowed her more freedom and kept her away from the toxicity of newsrooms.

Manisera also points out the class element in journalism. She could not afford institutes like Columbia University or the journalism schools in Italy and hence, followed an unconventional path of becoming an independent journalist. “I have lived in Beirut for several years and when I started to cover stories from Iraq afterwards, on the ground, I knew that these stories would have not found space in Italian media, so I looked into other ways,” Manisera says. “Our documentary Donne fuori dal Buio (Women out of the Dark) required lots of travelling around Iraq and tells the story of four Iraqi women from four different cities, 15 years after the US invasion. A successful crowdfunding campaign allowed us to make this webdoc available to the public and tells the story of a country away from monolithic stereotypes, with Sunni, Shia, Christian, secular and divorced women.”

For freelancers covering foreign affairs, finding space in Italian publications is complex. Between a low fee and the general provincialism in Italian newsrooms, things can get tough. “Then there is also an age issue in the newsrooms. When I found myself pitching stories about Baghdad rappers, I was interacting with older people stuck in their ways and unaware of where the world is heading. So there is a class, gender, and age issue in the newsrooms which affects their outlook,” Manisera adds.

However, these issues have inspired some changes. Manisera is one of the founders of FADA Collective, an Italian collective of journalists focused on foreign affairs, migration and the environment. “Journalism needs to exercise complexity, which does not mean presenting a complex storytelling, but rather a reality that is articulated and complex. FADA was born from an internal push among freelance colleagues covering foreign affairs, migration, and the environment, a push that has to do with professional solitude and the need to mix local and global and bring public interest to the centre of discussion in journalism.”

Claudia Torrisi further explains the state and experiences of freelance journalists in Italy. A freelance journalist herself and a member of yet another group of Italian freelancers, il Centro di Giornalismo Permanente (CGP, The Centre of Permanent Journalism), Torrisi is based in Rome and her work has been published in Open Democracy and Byline Times. “Freelance women journalists covering gender issues can be aided by the fact that in recent times there has been more attention to gender issues, especially in Italian mainstream media, unfortunately,” Torrisi tells The Fix.

“I say unfortunately because this has been happening because these and the connected rights have been under attack due to the rise of the far-right, as they stand at the centre of their political agenda. If before 2018-19, pitching a story about abortion was more difficult, now it is easier because of the attacks against abortion at an institutional level, and of the response on the opposite sense, by activists”.

This is very clearly reflected in the way the stories around gender issues, reproductive rights, abortion, violence against women, and femminicidi (femicides) are currently reported in the media. “These kinds of stories are badly presented in mainstream media, with some slight improvement due to the constant work of feminist movements, as well as of women in the journalistic profession, individually and in groups. On one occasion, one of these groups, working at the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore protested and led to modify an article in their newspaper which presented entrepreneur Alberto Genovese as a ‘volcano of ideas’, at a time when he was accused of having imprisoned and raped 11 women,” says Torrisi.

According to a survey in 2019, led by different groups and supported by the Italian Order of Journalists, 85% of women working in the journalistic sector have experienced different forms of sexual harassment. So, what happens when women take an editorial role in such a male-dominated industry?

The editor

Ensuring a better representation of women’s voices in the media would not only change the industry but also have an impact on the construction of public discourse. Studies show that when women control news content, it tends to be more gender-sensitive and representative of society. These changes in the media could also have significant economic improvements in the distribution of journalism, by reaching more female readers.

However, improvements in the field are very slow, even though there are many women journalists. And this is probably because “the mentality is not renewed by numbers alone, but it takes time to unhinge stereotypes and prejudices. There is a ‘history’ to be renewed. And new things must be given time to take root and bear fruit. Great progress has been made in recent years. But is it enough? Not,” says Nunzia Vallini, the editor of the local newspaper Giornale di Brescia (Brescia is a city of about 200,000 inhabitants in Northern Italy).

Some things are improving slightly around the world. Still citing the recent Reuters Institute report, of the 38 new top editors appointed between 2022 and 2023 across all the news media they analysed, 26 percent are women. In the U.S. and Finland, half of the new top editors appointed in the past year are women.

Consequently, women journalists in the newsrooms don’t have it easy.

The newsroom journalist

Francesca De Benedetti covers European and international issues for the daily newspaper Domani. Domani, for its investigative reporting, has been one of the most targeted publications by the Meloni government.

“When I attended the presentation of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2023 report by the European University Institute, one of the researchers, Marie Palmer, pointed out that the increase of women in positions of power in the media does not necessarily lead to more inclusivity in the media or more attention to the woman gaze in media narratives,” De Benedetti tells The Fix. 

“It is not just a matter of having more women in the media, but that women, also as editors, are present on an equal standing, and that we can express our views, also when they are not in line with the consensus.”

Domani, as De Benedetti explains, can be seen as virtuous within Italian media; the newsroom pays attention to maintaining a balance of representation in terms of gender. But that road, as a whole, is a long one. De Benedetti mentions former Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati, before the rise of Giorgia Meloni, and comments on how “women often reach positions of power through co-optation and they often mirror the patriarchal narrative.”

On a positive note though, De Benedetti highlights the importance of the role of readers and their support for women’s voices. She has experienced the same in her current role. A reactive public, she says, is “not only the main warranty of independence for us as a media but also for us women to present an alternative point of view”.

How to address the gender gap in media?

To tackle patriarchal cultures, it is not only crucial to reduce the gender gap, but also to change the way women’s stories are generally told. In this regard, the International Federation of Journalists, its partner COPEAM and the University of Padova, in 2023, had launched a training toolkit for journalists and journalism students to help gender inclusive political reporting.

In Italy too, the association GiULia, an acronym for GIornaliste Unite LIbere Autonome (Free Autonomous United Women Journalists), was founded in 2011 to promote both fair representation of women in the news and equal opportunities for female journalists in newsrooms. The association pursues its goals through press reviews, training, reports and in-depth articles. In the UK, there is a scheme called Women in Journalism which helps the women better their careers: finding mentors, career advice, help from female professionals in broadcast, print and online media. The international press freedom organisation Free Press Unlimited collaborates with more than 300 local media organisations in over 50 countries; it specifically focuses on gender equality in the media and improving working conditions.

In Torrisi’s view, it is central to have more women in top editorial roles. “There are many women in journalism, but it remains a male world because the seats of power, and not just the editorial ones, but the high decisional ones are male-owned,” says Torrisi.

Additionally, De Benedetti also highlights that it would be important to have more young women as columnists; columnists in Italian media tend to be mainly men in their 50-60-70s. Access to journalism schools for aspiring young journalists, both men and women, could be easier. Independent journalism can be promoted better; at the moment, there is a lack of philanthropic foundations and organisations in Italy that support independent journalism. 

“So I say there is still a long way to go. But I am confident that we are on the right track. Let’s face the road with determination, but also with serenity, helped by the passage of time,” Vallini concludes.

Source of the cover photo: Christopher BurnsHire via Unsplash

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