The Missing (Young) White Woman Syndrome

In 2004, journalist Gwen Ifill (1955-2016) introduced the phrase "Missing White Woman Syndrome" at a conference. She responded to news anchor Suzanne Malveaux who pointed out that there was a disparity in US media coverage with missing white, young women receiving more attention than non-white women and men. According to her, the media had failed to cover international genocides including Rwanda showing more interest in the two figure skaters Kerrigan and Harding than in a million genocide victims: "In 1994, during Rwanda, we were looking at Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding." "If it's a missing white woman, you're going to cover that, every day," Ifill responded (via). Later, Jon Stewart came up with the following algorithm for media coverage of missing people: Family Income x (Abductee Cuteness ÷ Skin Color)2 + Length of Abduction x Media Savvy of Grieving Parents (via).

13% of the US population and 31% of missing persons are Black; 76% of the US population and 54% of missing persons are white. Findings of a study carried out in 2013 show that missing white women are covered significantly more often than everyone else (via).

(...) what is missing from the popular disparity discourse surrounding “Missing White Woman Syndrome” is that cops and cover stories were never meant to rescue our loved ones, and those of us who make this demand might turn up empty.

In her article, Purnell explains the status quo with history, with white women's "cries and lies" galvanising law enforcement and lynch mobs to act on their behalf for many centuries. When the White-Slave Traffic Act was passed in 1910 to combat sex slavery and human trafficking, police officers and investigators were sent to "rescue" white women forcibly removing them from their homes in which they were living with Black men, immigrants, poor white men. At the same time, when the same white women demanded voting rights, education, equity, or housing, these efforts were resisted by their "rescuers". According to Gruber, "white women's alliance with law enforcement stemmed from not just racism and racial ptivilege but also women's need for power and protection in a society that significantly restricted their social, sexual, and economic liberty". From this perspective, the responses to missing white women are rather a failure of society than an accomplishment or a goal. Although a lot has changed for the better, there is still "the notion that the amount of media coverage that a missing person receives, or the number of resources that police expend to find them, is a litmus test for the value of Black life" (via).

More recently, a sample of 3.600 articles (newspapers, TV, raio, online outlets) about missing people published between January and November 2021 was analysed. The conclusion: "If you're young, white, female, and a resident of a big city, the coverage you'd receive if you went missing is vastly out of proportion". A white young woman missing in New York, for instance, could be covered in 67 news stories while a young Latino male would appear only 17 times and a middle-aged Black man would receive a maximum of four mentions (via).

A Black man who went missing in St. Louis, for instance, would only garner 12 news stories, while a young white woman from the same town would attract ten times the media coverage. (via)

In Washington specifically, Indigenous people represent only 1.9% of the state’s population, yet they account for 6% of active missing person reports. But “the actual number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is likely much higher,” as Indigenous persons, just like Latinx people, “are often inaccurately reported or listed as White in law enforcement databases.” Indigenous women go missing at ten times the national average, yet there are no high-profile cases, obsessive social media followings or extraordinary efforts by law enforcement to solve their cases. (via)

An analysis of the intersection of ethnicity and gender on the media coverage of missing persons showed that 49.74% of articles were dedicated to white women while only 17.40% covered white men. The numbers might not be absolutely correct (since e.g. many cases go unreported, databases have different definitions of "white", white women are kidnapped at higher rates) but the tendency is clear (via).

On this website (Columbia Journalism Review) you can calculate how "pressworthy" you are: LINK

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photograph by Peter Lindbergh (Paris) via