Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU’s Dr. Patty Williamson:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Last week we spoke with Dr. Patty Williamson, Director of the Honors program at CMU. Prior to that, she was part of the faculty in Broadcast and Cinematic Arts for 15 years. We pick up our conversation with Dr. Williamson to learn more about her research into the disparity of women working in the radio industry, and one of the reasons, the concept of system justification.
Patty Williamson:
We didn't look at market syndication or syndicated shows. We only looked at local talent within the station. But we did get a pretty good cross section. We got small markets, we got larger markets, medium markets in many different geographic regions across the country. Even though you look at the data from not just my earlier research but other research that pretty concretely shows that (that) women, people of color are underrepresented in commercial radio pretty much across the board. Women tend to have a lot of jobs in sales, but they are lacking on air. Again about 25% of on-air talent and commercial radio tends to be women. But the roles that they're in, tend to be very specific. They may be part of a morning show, about 1/3 of women said that they were part of a morning show, but when you look more closely, most of them were in what we would consider, quote, unquote sidekick roles. Sort of the marquee talent is a man or two men and then a woman has a smaller role. Maybe doing short news breaks, maybe doing weather and traffic, but not really being the driving force. In fact, only about 15% of morning shows are led by women and many women have talked over the years in different studies about the fact they've been told they wanted to do a radio morning show with another woman and we're told absolutely not. You can't have one more than one woman in the morning.
DN:
This system justification it (it) sounds as if it has in some ways insulated itself. We (we) don't see then as much of the legal action challenging this and if that's the case, do you have any ideas as to why?
PW
The thing that we tended to hear from women is that they didn't want to be seen as a problem. They didn't want to jeopardize their work, and they feared retribution if they became a problem. We had an example of someone that we talked to in the Detroit market, and she's been retired for several years. When I say retired, I don't know if it was really retirement because she was someone who stood up and filed a lawsuit against a coworker for sexual harassment, and she ended up losing her job. The colleague went on to be, continue to be a very popular on-air talent in the Detroit market. After that, she got a little work on weekends, but really, and she was a very well-known named talent at a station in Detroit for many years…
DN:
Established and then obviously things take the turn.
PW:
Yeah, very popular, well established. And she really never worked substantially in radio after that. It has a chilling effect on other women in that market. And the word gets out in other markets. And in fact, we actually heard from other women, that they, how should I put it? They again, when you talk about system justification, I don't know if that was what was behind it, but some of them kind of blamed her for her own career ending move. Sort of the idea like we all put up with that. And we know not to say anything.
DN:
So, you should have known better. Yeah, that adage. “Defending the Status Quo: Prevalence of System Justification attitudes in the radio industry,” the work of our guest Dr. Patty Williamson and her colleague in, not only the CMU campus, but also in this study, Doctor Heather Polinsky. Patty, thanks very much for taking the time to talk with us and it sounds as if there will be another conversation down the road for the two of us to look at this. Again, thanks for joining us.
PW:
Yeah, thanks so much, David.
