Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media. History Feminist writers, largely gaining prominence in the 1967s during second wave feminism, began examining the relationship between media and the perpetuation of misogyny and sexism, criticizing the Western canon for providing and promoting an exclusively white male world view. Notable feminists include Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, bell hooks, and Stuart Hall. These feminists typically perceived gender as a social construct, which is not only reflected in artistic work but also perpetuated by it. Until fairly recently, feminists have mainly directed their studies to gender representations in literature. Recently, a new wave of academic studies focused on gender representations in modern society and culture (such as in the film, advertisement, and cultural industries). Gender disparity in media careers Numbers of women in media professions such as journalism are growing: as of 2018 in the United States, 41.7% of the newsroom employees were women; the proportion of women journalists in online-only news organizations even reached 47.8%. However, the media is and has been statistically dominated by men, who hold the vast majority of power positions. Few women have been in leading positions; they made up only 28.3% of the television news directors and 30.5% of the managing editors. Today, many news organizations are striving for gender parity on their employees. A large number of international institutions and nonprofit organizations are advocating for gender equality in the media workplace. For instance, in 2018, UNESCO supported 42 media institutions and 16 universities to implement policies and strategies on gender equality. In addition, coherent with the strategy to empower women and girls through policy implementation, 31 institutions, community radio stations, and national broadcasters adopted policies on gender equality in media. The Bechdel test, coined by cartoonist Alice Bechdel and originally created to evaluate popular fiction's representation of women and subsequently adapted to employment in the media professions, shows that a number of women are employed but do not benefit from an equal voice. For example, women in radio are