Women As News Anchors

Women in all careers are striving to gain equality in the work force today, and female television news anchors are definitely part of the fight. The road to television news anchoring is a rocky one, where only a few women survive and many fail. Where progress was once thought to have been made, there aren't many females getting ahead in the world of television news. Today, there is a very slow, if any, gain in the numbers of women who succeed. There are many questions surrounding the subject of women in television news, and I will attempt to answer relevant ones in this paper. How have the women that actually make it to the top and succeed as anchorwomen, done it?
What does it take to make it? Why do those
It isn't a proven fact that every case of a woman getting fired from their professions were fired because of their age. The number of women news anchors is scarce. Only a few succeed, and the reason for this is because what is expected of them is much greater than what is expected of men. Women must work twice as hard, be twice as beautiful, and go above and beyond their abilities. The television broadcasting business is dominated by males, and, in turn, males have the majority of the power. Positive steps have been taken by women, but they are still far from being equal in the field. Advances are not being made quickly. Some men in the world of television news say that women do have a tougher time. Larry King had this to say:

I know that if I were "Loretta" King instead of "Larry" King I would be nowhere near where I am today. I would not have had a national radio talk show in 1978, a national cable show of my own, and a national column if I had started out being the "wrong" gender (Craft 1988, p. 6).

Al Ittleson, former vice-president of ABC News, says that physical appearance is important for both male and female broadcasters, but emphasizes the importance of a woman broadcaster's looks:

Women are supposed to be beautiful. People anticipate what a woman is supposed to look like, so when they come to television-I haven't seen an unattractive woman on television yet... In fact,