Ford: Breaking News: Women have more than the ability to make more humans

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The US anger over the Roe v. Wade case has not really resonated in Canada, despite some suspicious manual work.

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What no one is talking about is the cultural impact of the media’s focus on the fertility of women who are exposed to the issue of choice but are important. It is also part of the obsession with domination over women.

This is not about abortion, but a permanent and sometimes lazy identification of a woman by the womb. As the owner of something, and likewise as a member of the media, I’m probably more sensitive to the problem.

For example, I rarely read headlines about men such as “Father of triplets arrested for shoplifting” or “Helping six grandfathers deliver number seven.”

But this is exactly what women face when they open a newspaper, or in the case of the younger generation, click on a news site.

A good example of this is the New York Times’ recent headline: “A 10-year-old mother becomes a doctor.” A logical news debate can make that having 10 children (three of whom were born during her medical research) make it news. But she wasn’t the only one identified that way. A few years ago, the winner of the “bathroom diva” contest was called the grandmother, not the singer. Until late last week, when a road wrath in Calgary allegedly killed a 40-year-old woman, her first and subsequent headlines identified her as “five mothers.”

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We apologize to all my male editors for years, and we discuss, discuss, and decide on female fertility until their mindset changes and Armageddon makes it irrelevant.

I started my first job at Calgary Herald in 1964. It was a time when a married woman had to be identified as her husband’s name and her surname, Mrs.

Since then, there have been many changes. Those Changes — Women as Sports and Business Reporters. Women in senior management — a positive, more friendly and impartial workplace. Diversity, equal pay for equal work, inclusion and reconciliation have all moved forward. But the anecdote is not data. To do this, look at academic research on how women are identified. As an example, in “When Women Make Headlines,” Leonardo Nicoletti and Sahiti Salva survey more than 380,000 headlines in four countries (Canada wasn’t one of them), and women are explained by gender. Shown the frequency. Why is 51% of the population so identified by fertility? Why does this continue?

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I know that change is possible. I’ve seen it happen. But are my concerns valid? Let me give you an example of a naughty change.

Years ago, after the story about pregnancy and childbirth was explained in a photo of a male doctor, the two copy editors of the night shift, who were in charge of filling the inner page of Herald, both of us are women. In the bathroom. We have a war of two women against the patriarchy. We chose news and feature articles about women all night long. For a political story focused on men, I found a picture of my wife in the foreground. The two had the ball. We became bold and the next day’s dissertation was filled with our courage.

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No one noticed. None of the senior managers asked if the story above the crease (arrangement of important news selections) was about women or depicted in women’s photographs.

In fact, it didn’t make a difference to the reader. No one wrote an indignation letter to the editor about the distorted “news.” No one in Alberta or Parliament was happy with the “radical feminists” who adopted the media.

why? There was no reason to do so. All stories were legal and had different processing and headings.

So why are we still trapped in a sexist past in this era?

My point is not that you shouldn’t mention women’s relationships or mention children, but that you should identify women as you would men. Men are generally introduced by their position, their achievements, their careers, their heroes, their aspirations, and their personal goals.

The debate about who “owns” my body and the bodies of other women will never be resolved until our perceptions change.

I have hope. From the day I stepped into this newsroom, I’ve had so many changes that can’t be cynical. You may be skeptical, but you always have hope.

Catherine Ford is a regular columnist at Calgary Herald.