Are the Numbers Lying?

In my last post I discussed some of the statistics regarding women in the media and the gender representations in the newsrooms from 1990-2013. While the statistics say that women represent around 36% of the population in the newsrooms, studies show that between 70%-76% of journalism and mass communications graduates are women. So where are the women going? Well, according to research done by USC's Annenberg School of Journalism and Communications around 36.3% of female graduates sought public relation jobs in comparison to 25.2% of male graduates. Also according to the study 32.5% of females chose adverting agency jobs while only 27.5% of males chose this route. These statistics are very significant because it shows that although women are graduating with journalism degrees they are not pursuing an actual journalism career unlike their male counterparts.  Many speculate that this may be because working in journalism is very masculine and oriented in a way where you have to sacrifice a lot of your personal time and for many young women that can be seen as very intimidating. Also in addition to this, many researchers believe that women look to work in a market were the jobs are stable and consistent and since the internet is changing the way news is being reported this is one possible reason for why women opt out of the journalism career.  But, although they are avoiding the more difficult path, some believe that they are at a disadvantage because the advertising and public relation industry is 3/4ths women and therefore there will actually be more competition in comparison to news.