Journalist sees parallel hurdles for minority women in Canadian and global media

As a woman of mixed race, Minelle Mahtani worked hard to find her voice as a journalist in Canada, rising to a position in the CBC national television newsroom and becoming the host of her own radio show in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Today, as an academic who speaks to international audiences about identity and news, Mahtani sees that visible minority women around the world face many similar hurdles.

“The systemic patterns of inequality are strikingly similar between Canada and other countries when it comes to journalism,” says Mahtani, an associate professor at the Institute for Social Justice and chair of Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Formerly she was an associate professor in journalism and geography at the University of Toronto.

Earlier this year, Mahtani virtually joined a panel discussion in Bhutan on gender in the newsroom hosted by the Embassy of Canada to Bhutan, in partnership with the Bhutan Media Foundation. Speaking about gender and diversity in the media in Canada, she told 50 Bhutanese journalists from print, broadcast and digital media, that while there are more women than men today in Canadian newsrooms, studies show that “women of colour are still virtually non-existent.” She said that women journalists and media workers in Canada and globally face online bullying and harassment, according to surveys, including offensive messages targeting their gender and ethnic identity. She also pointed out that women journalists are not supported by management in areas such as subsidizing childcare. 

Mahtani noted that it’s important to look at “the intersections of identity” and how non-binary and trans individuals are supported in newsrooms. She said start-up publications appear to be much more informed and committed to equity, diversity and inclusion in their hiring, with more openness and less hierarchy on the job. 

Mahtani, who is of Indian and Iranian descent, said in a later interview that she’s spent her entire career focused on race and news. After she made the move from journalism to academia, as a post-doctoral project, she travelled around the world speaking to women journalists about their experiences of gender representation and race in newsrooms. She wrote a book recording her findings called Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality and co-edited a collection of essays called Global Mixed Race. She has also written a memoir entitled May It Have a Happy Ending, which will be published in fall 2024.

Mahtani said she worries about the obstacles women face in journalism today given the decline of traditional media. She tells young women in the field to look for different outlets for the stories they want to tell and find mentors who can support them. She told the audience in Bhutan that journalism schools in Canada now focus on emphasizing gender and news and intersectionality. “That makes a big difference,” she added.