ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to extend literature on women and the inequities of communications policy, and to shed greater light on women's active efforts to engage problems and reshape policy to better serve their interests. It deals with communications policy structure that has oppressed and continues to oppress people of color, women, and others in United States, blocking their access to decision-making and ownership levels in media companies and thereby limiting their voices in public arenas where issues are addressed and political strategies are formulated and pursued. There is limited amount of research on women's relationship to media at macro- and meso-levels, particularly with regard to communications policy. The analytical framework for remaining discussion is informed by theories of feminist political economy and women's media activism. Feminist political economy, as defined by Riordan, is concerned with meso- and macro-levels of capitalism as they shape women's day-to-day interactions, and the routine ways that social institutions within capitalist society naturalize male bias.
