Abstract

Although women journalists have been secluded from radio jobs for a long time, their spaces have recently opened up, due to the marginality of the medium and the shortness of high-profile reporting jobs, factors that make radio less attractive to men. This study provides an account of the main results of the existing literature on the role of women in radio news' production cultures and shows the results of an empirical research on the presence of women voices in radio «hard» and «soft» news. The chosen context for the study is a sample of four Italian news radio stations. Lacking any gender-based polarization in the news coverage, the article calls for a deeper analysis considering also the peculiarities of radio journalism and of the symbolic power of the voice.