Woman Pulitzer winners require higher qualifications than men

The Pulitzer Prize in Journalism is one of the world's most prestigious awards.

A University of Missouri researcher has found that despite progress in the last few decades, gender disparities in the field of journalism have existed as long as the profession has.

Researchers led by Yong Volz, assistant professor of journalism studies in the MU School of Journalism, studied biographical data from all 814 historical winners of the Pulitzer Prize from 1917 to 2010.

They found that the majority of the 113 female Pulitzer Prize winners enjoyed access to greater resources than the average male winner.

"When facing a general gender disadvantage, women journalists have had to rely on greater resources than their male counterparts to achieve equal success," Volz said.

"Beyond talent and hard work, majoring in journalism, earning a graduate degree, a metropolitan upbringing, and employment with an elite publication such as the New York Times were among the things females needed to achieve this highest professional recognition. Male winners have not necessarily had to possess such high qualifications in order to win," Volz said in a statement.

Volz divided the Pulitzer Prize winners into three historical periods: the exclusionary period (1917-1951), the compensational equality period (1952-1990), and the formal equality period (1991-2010).

During the exclusionary period, only two prize winners were female, the first coming in 1937.

Volz saw an increase of female winners after the 1950s through the 1980s, but those winners were more likely to have higher credentials compared to their male counterparts in order to compensate for gender disadvantage.

For women who did not possess additional qualifications, however, they had a better chance to win a Pulitzer only when working in teams and/or working on local reporting and in-depth reporting.

"While there have been significant improvements, gender disadvantage has not completely disappeared from the journalism field.

"Even after 1991, only 27 per cent of all Pulitzer winners in journalism were females, which is lower than the percentage of females in American newsrooms, which stands at about 33 per cent," Volz said.

The study appears in the Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.