Gender, organizational and professional identities in journalism

Abstract

The emphasis of this review essay is on gender in journalism, placed in the context of work done by media professionals in news organizations. In the recent debates on this topic, certain aspects of news production practice are assigned crucial roles: gender, journalistic professionalism, and the media organization. This essay reviews the literature on each of these aspects and identifies where and how concepts of gender identity, professional identity and organizational identity occur. At the conceptual level, inconsistencies in concepts are pointed out and a preliminary positioning of gender, professional and organizational identity in media organizations is suggested. This review also argues that in certain countries, a shifting balance can be observed: a growing hegemony of organizational identity over professional identity in which gender seems to be a casualty of conflicts outside gender relations per se.