Who Really Leads? A Qualitative Exploration of Gender Equity in Leadership of Australian Newsrooms

While recent research shows that women’s leadership in Australian newsrooms has grown, we have little understanding of how this change may have impacted career opportunities for women, or the newsroom more broadly. We draw from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with editorial leaders in newsrooms across Australia to understand how editorial leaders perceive the impact of women’s leadership on newsrooms. We find that Australian newsrooms have transformed in the last decade, with women dominating editorial leadership and staffing that is more reflective of gender equity. However, the interview data make clear that there are two exceptions—firstly, the executive C-suite of most mainstream news organisations is still dominated by men, and secondly, women’s leadership across reporting topics is still dominated by soft news. We, thus, provide evidence of just how much women’s editorial leadership roles appear to have resolved some of the gendered divisions in Australian newsrooms and the journalism they produce.