Hollywood’s misogyny. The portrayal of female journalists in films

Female journalists occupy a prominent yet ambivalent position in Hollywood cinema, where professional authority is repeatedly negotiated through gendered narrative conventions. This study analyzes 28 Hollywood films spanning the early sound era to 2023 in which female journalists appear as central or recurring characters. It combines qualitative content analysis with illustrative textual analysis, drawing on feminist theory, Kate Manne’s concept of misogyny as structural logic, and Amy Allen’s feminist theory of power. The analysis identifies four recurring figures: the sob sister, strong woman, femme fatale, and sex goddess. Rather than forming a linear trajectory of progress, these figures constitute a relational power model through which women’s journalistic labor is alternately emotionalized, conditionally authorized, moralized, or eroticized across changing historical contexts. The findings demonstrate how Hollywood adapts its gendered regulation of professional women while maintaining persistent structural constraints on female journalistic authority.