Women behind the news at Bloomberg News

Bloomberg News editor in chief Matt Winkler spoke with Lisa Kassenaar, a former Wall Street reporter and senior writer for Bloomberg Markets magazine, who heads the Bloomberg News women’s initiative as editor-at-large of Global Women’s Coverage, about its interest in covering women-related business news.

Here is an excerpt:

KASSENAAR: Why is it so important, as Bloomberg News grows, to focus on women’s roles in the global economy?

WINKLER: We are journalists because we are committed to revealing the world as it is, as it is unfolding. One thing I encountered again and again as Bloomberg News evolved was the relative absence of women authorities in our markets reporting. I said to myself that this can’t possibly be right, and it can’t go on. We need to be conscious of what we are writing every day, and of the people in our stories who are quoted.

Wall Street is full of mythology, especially about male dominance. So, given that that is a subject that we at Bloomberg especially write about, it was especially important that we noticed.

The other part of this was ‘OK, who is leading this news organization?’ I became aware there should be a much greater role for women in every aspect, from reporting to editing to managing teams to leadership.

Finally, one of the unsettling surprises, wherever we go in the world, is that we see poverty. And whenever we start asking questions, we find that wherever poverty is greatest, the gender gap is widest. That’s a big picture story that we can’t escape, and that we must report on.

Read more here.