Women in the media

In the 21^st century, we like to believe that a woman can do everything a man can do and can even do it better.

My journalism class has 20 students out of which only five are male. Imagine my surprise when statistics showed to me that the number of male journalists is significantly higher than female journalists.

I don’t only mean in developing countries where women don’t have the same opportunities as men or have laws that restrict them from doing certain things. It’s an all over the world phenomenon. The Global media monitoring(GMM) report of 2010 that spans over a 110 countries, studying the media situation says that there is a higher number of women studying to be journalists but much less actually make it into work.

About 62 % percent of all journalists are male while only 38 % percent are female. We like to argue that women and men are equal but these statistics prove otherwise.

The reasons are many.

One is the glass ceiling that refers to an invisible barrier that prevents women and other minorities from climbing to the highest rung of corporate hierarchy.This is demotivating as from the beginning a woman knows that no matter how hard she works this will be a barrier to her success.

Another is it’s difficult for a staunch feminist to get ahead in the male dominated media industry. If you have to succeed you have to become “one of the boys” or a stereotypical definition of a woman.Women are clearly still not seen as an important part of the world. According to GMM report ,“24% of the people heard or read about in print, radio and television news are female. In contrast, 76% of the people in the news are male.”

Considering half the world’s population is female there is definitely something wrong with this statistic. Even when they are in the news they’re celebrities, victims or both. Women may go hoarse screaming out that equality exists but these hard facts tell us otherwise.

My professor, Mr. Amitav Sinha Roy gave us a viable albeit difficult solution. He said to all of us female students, “don’t get mad, get even.” Watch out world, it maybe a small start but 15 of us girls are ready to tackle this media industry and soon.