Of Gender and Journalism: A Statistical Observation on Male and Female Journalists from Manila Bulletin

                Newspaper issues released from March 19, 2015 to March 23, 2015 by Manila Bulletin have been observed in order to formulate a study about the number of male and female journalists whose stories made it to the front page of every issue.

                The total number of stories that made it to the front page,  written by male news writers from March 19, 2015 to March 23, 2015 is 14 out of 29, resulting to a percentage of 48.28 % while stories written by female writers for the same day sum up to 15 out of 29 with the percentage of 51.72%.

                For March 19, 2015 stories written by male writer and female writers are the same in number unlike on March 20, 2015 where there are more stories written by female writers that made it the front page compared to male writers. The percentage of stories by female writers for that day is 75% and for the male writers, it is 25%.On the other hand, for March 21, 2015, more articles by male news writers were placed on the front page compared to that of Female writers. The percentage of new articles by male writers is 60% while news articles by female writers were only 40%. The findings for March 22 are the same as that of the previous day. For March 23, 2015, there were once again, more news articles by female writers that were published on the front page compared to that of male writers, with the percentage of 55.56% for female writers and 44.44% for male writers.

               

    Many of the written articles were bout political issues and mostly concerning the updates on the Mamasapano incident. About 55% of the articles in the front page that were about the Mamasapano incident were written by females. Only 45% of the articles about the Mamasapano incident belonged to male news writers.

                Most of the banner stories on the said dates covered the Mamasapano incident and about 75% of the said articles that became a banner story were written by Male and Female writers writing for one article.

                The number of articles that became banner stories for the March 19, 2015 to March 23, 2015 was mostly written by male journalists, with the percentage of 66.67%.

                Though news articles by female journalists dominated the front page of the said issues, the difference of their percentage and number isn’t very large in amount. The results also vary per day and there isn’t a specific distinction as to what genre of news female writers and male writers are good at or focused on.

                It can be inferred from the results that in newspapers published by the Manila Bulletin, female and male writers are equally progressive enough in order to have their articles placed on the first page of the newspaper. It can also be concluded that the Manila Bulletin is mindful of the competence of their employees regardless of their gender.  The results of the statistical information show that writers are given equal recognition