When Ita Buttrose was appointed as Editor of CLEO Magazine, she was breaking new ground in the Australian print media scene.

SInce that time, there has been a slow but steady increase, with females now deading up major metro newspapers in this country including The Sydney Morning Herald.

In a recent article in The Australian it was revealed that in 2010, women made up just 4.9 per cent of all directors of media companies, which was down from 8.3 per cent in 2004, according to a survey by the federal government's Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

According to the article, in 2010, women held 14 per cent of executive management positions in the media industry, which was down from 15.4 per cent in 2004, although still better than the national average of 10.2 per cent across all sectors.

The report revealed that a Media survey of 15 boards of commercial media companies and public broadcasters backs this result, finding 13 of them have between zero and two female directors, the exceptions being the ABC and SBS, which each have four women on their boards.