Feminist Frequencies: Why Radio Needs Feminism

Abstract

This essay considers radio's contributions to our sense of communities and the significance that storytellers, producers, and audiences with diverse backgrounds and gender experiences contribute in shaping culture. In the era of multimedia platforms, discussions about the revolutionary possibilities of digital radio recall speculations during the early days of wireless about how the new medium would impact culture. This article underscores how radio's limited representation of diverse experiences has prevented it from meeting its potential. Radio needs feminism to counter the overt sexism of “shock jock” deejays as well as institutionalized biases that shape programming at most stations. Through this perspective, the author offers examples of feminist interventions across traditional and Internet radio platforms and envisions models grounded in Bell Hooks' definition of feminism as “… a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (2000, p. viii).

Notes

Notes

¹ Hilmes (1997, p. 142) has written about a debate that was generated by a record-store owner who wrote a letter to a radio review columnist speculating that the public did not like female radio announcers because, without being able to be seen, they were “undesirable.”

² Circle A Radio was a collectively-produced radio program that broadcast on KBOO community radio in Portland, OR from 2000–2012. The membership of the collective ranged from 2–5 producers, all women, though this was never an explicit criterion. The author was a member/producer from 2004–2009.

³ Shapiro looked at the podcast-delivery app Stitcher and found that men exclusively hosted 71 of its 100 top-rated shows and that women alone hosted only 11 (the other programs had mixed-gender cohosts).

⁴ The title of Susan Douglas' book, Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination also references this concept.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Honna Veerkamp

Honna Veerkamp is Editorial Assistant for JRAM and Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology. An Interdisciplinary Media Arts MFA candidate and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Radio, Television, and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale), she is a multimedia artist and documentarian with research interests in radio, sound, critical cultural studies, oral history, and visual art.