Estonia: Women Journalists and Women’s Emancipation in Estonia

Abstract

As shown in the Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media (Global Report) (Byerly 2011), ‘Women at the 10 news companies surveyed in Estonia enjoy a high degree of equality’ (p. 12). This finding is consistent with data from Margaret Gallagher’s (1995) An Unfinished Story: Gender Patterns in Media Employment a decade and a half earlier. Gallagher reported a geographic ‘hierarchy’, in which ‘the Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania were at the top, with women averaging 50 per cent of the media workforce’ (Byerly 2011, p. 39). This geographic hierarchy is still in existence today. In the news companies surveyed for Estonia for the Global Report, women are above parity with men at several occupational levels including top-level management, senior-level and junior-level professional, and sales, finance and administration. Additionally, in these companies, women are at or close to parity with men at the occupational levels of middle management, technical professional, and production and design. However, there are ‘two exceptions to women’s full participation’, and both of these are ‘in the upper ranks of the companies’. As Byerly (2011) wrote, ‘Only 1 of 6 (16.7 per cent) in governance is a woman, and only 3 of 14 (21.4 per cent) in senior management are women’ (p. 275). In spite of this disparity, women in these news companies ‘enjoy a high level of job security’, as nearly all employees of these companies, ‘men and women alike’, work in regular, full-time jobs (Byerly 2011, p. 277). The salaries of women in these companies are overall slightly lower than men’s at most employment levels (p. 277).