Clare Stephens: How women in media are held to higher standards than men

Clare Stephens. Podcast cover art credit: Luke Latty Photography

It’s long been KIIS Breakfast host Mike Etheridge’s experience that radio listeners hold women to higher standards than their male on-air counterparts.

Etheridge – aka Mike E – recalls his own experience with his former co-host of fourteen years, Emma Chow.

“I’d say the worst shit – just something horrible – and no-one cared.”

“She’d say one little thing, and the phones would light up or the socials would go off.”

In the latest episode of the Behind the Mic with Mike E podcast, journalist and former Mamamia Editor in Chief Clare Stephens examines why – in the dreaded court of public opinion – women fare worse than men.

Stephens – creator of The Pile On podcast – feels women tend to suffer more with the difficulty of likeability. And whether they’re married or have kids often plays a significant part in how they’re perceived.

“It is so hard to think of a woman in Australian public life who is universally liked,” says Stephens. “For some reason, as soon as a woman is successful, visible – has any kind of social power – we find something that is not OK about her.”

When it comes to audience perception, Stephens notes that women are held to very high standards.

“Men are allowed to be funny. Men are allowed to be smart. Men are allowed to be successful and not beaten with that stick of ‘yeah, but are you good?’”

Ironically, it’s often other women who are doing the piling on – particularly in the pop culture space.

Being a high-profile radio personality requires more than just a thick skin. Sometimes you need a rhinoceros hide.

By virtue of working in the media herself, Stephens is sometimes close to the person who ends up getting crucified online.

“And you can see, on a personal level, that they are broken and they’re not OK, and that they’re sorry.”

“But the hatred towards them is just so intense.”

Often, the public can be particularly unforgiving, accusing the person in question of ‘playing the mental health card.’

Stephens is all about unearthing the emotional truth at the centre of it all.

Do some people deserve to be cancelled?

Stephens feels that particular term has been co-opted by different movements and politicised over recent years.

“I do think that there is a line between holding people accountable for the way they use their power and the language that they use and the decisions that they make, and holding people in contempt – suggesting that they are irredeemable and evil and lacking in all humanity.”

There are also times when Stephens might take the view “Well, you might get shit on the internet, but you get to go home to your five million dollar house.”

But Stephens worries about the long-term repercussions of normalising the practice treating other people with contempt.

She says that since we’ve started living much of our lives online, the temperature of public debate has changed. It’s become more intense. More black and white. Less about genuine dialogue, and more about scoring points.

“We currently don’t have a blueprint for forgiveness on the internet.”

Mike E image supplied.