This handbook is a timely academic adaptation of information contained in the Global Report on the Status of Women in News Media, a study commissioned by the International Women's Media Foundation and published in 2011. The study was conducted by the book's editor, international feminist media scholar, Carolyn M. Byerly. The text draws together the most robust data from that study, presenting it in 29 chapters on individual nations and three additional chapters with historical background on women in journalism and a theoretical framework grounded in feminist political economy. The book is the most expansive effort to date to consider women's standing in the journalism profession across the world. The contributing authors, in most cases the original researchers for their respective nations in the Global Report study, seek to question the status of women in newsrooms, asking how far women have come and what their progress (or lack of progress) tells us about women's right to communicate.