Watching iconic 2000s-era rom coms didn’t make me want to fall in love. It made me want to be a journalist. 

Seeing various film protagonists live glamorously while pursuing fulfilling writing careers led me to believe the real-life industry might also share that same support for leading female voices.

Looking around at my peers in my journalism courses, I would expect that graduating and pursuing a career in media would entail working in a female-dominated environment. But while women make up two-thirds of students pursuing degrees in journalism, the reality of newsrooms doesn’t reflect this.   

In plenty of U.S. media outlets, the highest-paying positions still tend to be overrun by men. Female journalists are also underrepresented in the types of stories they cover. Men largely dominate sports, politics and science coverage, and women’s perspectives on these important topics often go unheard.

To see more women succeed in journalism, we need to address the barriers that prevent them from breaking into the industry and staying in it long-term. Workplace environments play a large part in the pervasive problems within the industry.

University of Minnesota journalism studies assistant professor Carolina Velloso said women already working as journalists need better support.

“Lots of women have reported leaving the industry for other reasons, such as professional difficulties, gender-based harassment and a general lack of support in the forms of robust maternity leave programs and things of that nature that would allow women to remain longer in the industry,” Velloso said.

Women who do decide to have children often fear that their journalistic careers will fade or be sidelined, a worry their male peers don’t seem to share. Having to shape your career around family life is a burden often reserved for women, and in a fast-paced newsroom environment, that can hurt your career. Even if you don’t decide to have children, the way you’re treated by your peers can greatly impact how long you decide to stay actively working and pursuing your goals.  

University media and journalism studies associate professor Diane Cormany reflected on starting at a male-dominated engineering magazine, where her presence drew negative attention. 

“I was one of three or four women in the entire field,” Cormany said. “You have to kind of work to be respected and considered an equal.”

In 2026, the influence of the internet adds another layer of pressure, giving users a platform to anonymously intimidate and harm female journalists. A combination of unchecked workplace harassment, higher levels of scrutiny and rampant online abuse work in tandem to prevent female journalists from doing the work they love at full capacity.

“If you watch a live press conference, the women get overlooked constantly,” Cormany said.

Discrimination during press conferences is especially volatile during Donald Trump’s term as president. Trump continues to shut down and insult female reporters, even in front of large audiences. 

Publicly rejecting the poor treatment of female journalists is the starting point for creating an industry where women are treated with the same dignity as their male peers.

Velloso said her time researching gender and media was impactful for how she saw disparity in the journalism field.

“It’s been eye-opening to see how many women prematurely leave the industry,” Velloso said. “Larger cultural shifts need to happen in order to support all journalists in having long and successful careers in the industry.”

Cormany said supporting anyone going into the field of journalism is vital, considering the number of people joining has dwindled. We need to encourage the people who feel journalism is a viable career for them and continue to support women once they’re in the field.   

“People just feeling like this is a field they want to pursue, that’s important,” Cormany said. “There’s the overall industry trends that are kind of fighting against even having those editor roles to begin with.”

There are bright futures for female journalists as long as we’re willing to stand by them along the way. 

“I think women need to support women and help uplift people to succeed in those roles,” Cormany said. “When I was out there, and I was getting into editorial, it was because I had people I was working alongside who were kind of seeing something in me and making sure to hold me up and push me forward.”

Listening to the experiences of female journalists and preparing women for the field in college will help future writers navigate their careers better.

“Women leaving the journalism industry is a systemic issue that can only really be solved by a large concerted effort across the industry to improve working conditions for all journalists,” Velloso said.

In the meantime, we need to better prepare and support student journalists if we want them to go far in their careers. 

Although female journalists continue to succeed and break barriers, gender-based discrimination should never be part of a job description.