Once Journalism was a male dominated sector, apparently jargon of Journalism literature created as masculine. For example: cameraman, production boy and so on. Nowadays, women are entering the world of media. But, the participation is not that much satisfactory due to motion inertia. The first challenge comes to a female journalist when she gets married and becomes a mother. Because, journalism is a pretty much challenging profession which demands shifting duty. In this situation, she highly needs support from family, society and the media house where she works. Depressingly, neither her family nor the society is supportive to her. Therefore, a female journalist has to compromise her career and becomes a mother. When she comes back to her work, she finds her male colleagues much more advanced in career than her. Moreover, we are still having the traditional mindset that males are the bread earner, not the females.
People are still having the typical mindset regarding journalism as this discipline is particularly visible for male. However, the scenario of women journalism is becoming better compared to last 10 years. Though globally only 3- 4% women are in the position of a decision maker which we call cloud position. Women are now taking journalism as profession in Bangladesh as well. They are working efficiently and sincerely. But unfortunately they are not portrayed properly.
Another important thing is that the women journalists are specifically assigned to work either women bit, children bit or cultural bit. They have never been assigned to work in the area of defense, business or budget. It is quite unlikely to find any investigative report by women journalists. Every media house should have specific policy on women presentation on media. We find only a few news where women are mentioned as the source of news apart from any rape case or any accident. Female participation is mostly absent in the news which are related to defense or finance and so on. Women of different ages are working from dawn to dusk which has never been exposed through media. Rather media has still a tendency to show that women are doing nothing. Media houses should also be aware of choosing the words during the presentation of women. News related to women is not getting priority in media. I think Positive discrimination for women workers can be addressed by media institutions to ensure gender parity.
Government can adopt gender sensitive policy to eliminate disparity. Information Ministry can take initiative to make media institutions adopt appropriate gender guideline in their institutions. According to Citizen Charter 2008, one third female should participate at decision making level in media houses. Before adopting western model in terms of women participation in job market, we have to prepare the gender sensitive infrastructure, policy and so on.
