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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Participation in news-making has been a key concern of ethnic minorities and women—and, more specifically, women of ethnic minorities. However, intersectionality is rarely applied in a systematic way in the study of news production. Most research on news production explores one unified social category, such as women, or a specific ethnic minority, ignoring inequalities within it. This paper undertakes a case-study of Russian-speaking women journalists who resettled in Israel during the wave of mass immigration from the Former Soviet Union of the 1990s. In this way, it contends with dual exclusion: gendered and ethnic. Studying the experience of a minority group of women may refine social understanding of the challenges and contributions of diversity in newsrooms.
Based on narrative interviews with 18 Russian-Israeli women journalists who work in variety of news media: television, radio, and new media, the study aims to conceptualize how their complex subjectivities emerge in their journalistic work: What mechanisms exclude these women from and within the profession; what mechanisms promote inclusion of them within the profession; and what strategies do they implement to cope with the barriers they confront?
The findings demonstrate how their work experience is constructed by their positioned identity closely related to their generation of immigration—distinguishing between first generation, second generation and 1.5 generation. I conclude that each generation experiences, adopts, and develops distinct mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion deriving from its social visibility. This finding may refine social understanding of the challenges and contributions of diversity in journalism and newsrooms.
Visibility, Inclusion, and Exclusion in Work Experiences of Immigrant Women Journalists: Three Generations of Russian-Israeli Women Journalists
Participation in news-making has been a key concern of ethnic minorities and women—and, more specifically, women of ethnic minorities. However, intersectionality is rarely applied in a systematic way in the study of news production. Most research on news production explores one unified social category, such as women, or a specific ethnic minority, ignoring inequalities within it. This paper undertakes a case-study of Russian-speaking women journalists who resettled in Israel during the wave of mass immigration from the Former Soviet Union of the 1990s. In this way, it contends with dual exclusion: gendered and ethnic. Studying the experience of a minority group of women may refine social understanding of the challenges and contributions of diversity in newsrooms.
Based on narrative interviews with 18 Russian-Israeli women journalists who work in variety of news media: television, radio, and new media, the study aims to conceptualize how their complex subjectivities emerge in their journalistic work: What mechanisms exclude these women from and within the profession; what mechanisms promote inclusion of them within the profession; and what strategies do they implement to cope with the barriers they confront?
The findings demonstrate how their work experience is constructed by their positioned identity closely related to their generation of immigration—distinguishing between first generation, second generation and 1.5 generation. I conclude that each generation experiences, adopts, and develops distinct mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion deriving from its social visibility. This finding may refine social understanding of the challenges and contributions of diversity in journalism and newsrooms.
Bio
Einat Lachover, einatl@mail.sapir.ac.il
Department of Communication, Sapir Academic College
ORCID identifier is 0000-0002-6503-6675
Einat Lachover (Ph.D. Tel-Aviv University, 2003) is an associate professor at Sapir Academic College. Her work is dedicated to critical analysis of the encounters between gender and a broad range of media forms and contexts, such as: gender construction of news production; gendered discourse in news media; gender ideologies in popular media; and girlhood and media. She also researches questions related to cultural discourse, memory, and national identity. She published in international journals, such as: Communication Theory, Journalism, International Journal of Communication, Communication Culture and Critique, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Children and Media, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Journal of Gender Studies, Israel Affairs, NASHIM, The Journal of Israeli History.