The Martlet

With the recent appointments of Dawna Friesen as lead anchor for the Global National newscast and Lisa LaFlamme as lead anchor for CTV National News, a new question is on the horizon: are we approaching a truly new and exciting chapter in Canadian broadcasting?

Some may claim that the appointment of women to highly visible positions in the media signals the progress of gender equality in Canada. But gender equality remains an unfinished project despite these appointments.

I see these appointments pessimistically. If the continuing exclusion of the differences and power relations structuring the lived experiences of women in the public discourse signals anything, it is that Friesen and LaFlamme are mere substitutes for men in an overwhelmingly patriarchical institution.

Global National and CTV News continue to support the idea that these high profile appointments are tantamount to the triumph of equality for women. This fantasy is based on the failure of the Canadian media to think critically about what equality should look like. It was too easy for Global National and CTV News to conflate the condition of two privileged women with the condition of all.

One could claim that the appointments are beneficial because they impose a public standard of employment equity to be modeled by the Canadian audience. But the idea that these appointments represent the achievement of equality presupposes a standard of equity, which, in practice, serves to protect the most powerful groups in society.

These appointments show how often the media frames the quality of equality in male terms. These malestream values and activities need to be scrutinized constantly. In the popular news, women’s views are rarely solicited outside the conventionally hetero-sexy topics of beauty, fashion and entertainment. Most malestream coverage still relies on men as experts in business, politics and economics. Women in the news are overwhelming represented in stories about accidents, natural disasters or health care, not in stories that convey the lived reality of a society structured on the exclusion of people on the basis on gender, sexuality, race and ability.

As news anchors, Friesen and LaFlamme will follow a standard routine. They will read from a teleprompter to report breaking news stories over a live broadcast. They will provide transitions into live reports from field correspondents and other parts of the broadcast. They might even help select, write and edit breaking stories. But it is very likely, at least for a socially unengaged audience, that their leading roles will make the erasure of women from the public discourse easier to see.

It is time to move beyond the common assumptions surrounding gender roles and equality. It is not sufficient for gender equality that women merely adopt the behaviours, attitudes and ambitions of men in powerful positions.

The critical question is not about the difference that LaFlamme and Friesen will make, but the difference that difference makes. When the identities of privileged women become representative of the condition of all, differences of sexuality, race, class and ability are systematically erased.