FSD Newsletter Fall 2003

For a very long time, female journalists around the world have faced a number of serious professional problems ranging from lower pay to limited options for promotion. To find out where they stand today, Con/text solicited essays from females journalists in a number of different countries. Their brief reports on the status of women journalist today are included below. Of course, there are many countries and regions that are not represented here. If you know of any journalists who would be willing to write about their experiences as well, please send their contact info to Chris Demaske at cd2@u.washington.edu and we will include their essays in the newsletter issue that will be published in Spring 2004. Also, keep your eyes open in the Spring ssue for a special report on women journalists in Iraq.

Rising Above The (Non)Clutter
I was once standing behind Daniel Schorr in a Washington, D.C., post office and I couldn’t resist telling him how much I admired his news analysis on National Public Radio. Glancing at the labels on the manuscript envelopes I was mailing, he said, Well, you don’t do so badly yourself! I smiled and pointed out that I was Elayne Clift, not noted Newsweek contributor, Eleanor Clift, something I have to do with irritating frequency when people tell me they’ve heard me on the radio or read my work.

Prima facie, I don’t mind being mistaken for Eleanor. For a fleeting moment, I’m even flattered. The problem, from my perspective, is that there is only room, it seems, for one Clift in the business of American mainstream journalism. Or, for that matter, for one Ellen Goodman; one Anna Quindlen; one Molly Ivins. Editors and producers seem to think they’ve handled the woman thing by allowing one good female into the locker room called a studio or newsroom.

The women they’ve chosen to represent the rest of us are all superb at their craft; they are a credit to all female journalists who don’t make the news or editorial pages in the media establishment because a handful of really sharp women got there first. I offer my sincere kudos to the few who were in the right place at the right time (or who knew someone in high places).

But I have to admit I’d like to share some of that space; just a few column inches now and again would be fine or at least something. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be writing for several alternative presses, and reporting occasionally for peripheral radio programs. (Once I actually made it onto NPR’s All Things Considered and PBS’s MacNeil-Lehrer Hour, but both times as organizational spokesperson.) It’s just that I think I have something to say too, and from the feedback I get, I seem to say it as well as the handful of stars who represent the rest of us.

There is hope, I think, for the next generation of women journalists. It seems that we are entering the profession in record numbers these days, and critical mass is sure to make a difference (although it is worrying that the feminization of journalism appears to correlate to lower incomes in the field). And for that I am glad.

I just wish that I’d been able to have my own fifteen minutes of fame in which my voice, and what I had to say, might have risen above the clutter of male monopoly and macho reporting. I think I could have held my own with Eleanor, Ellen, Anna, and Molly. I even think I could have given Daniel Schorr a run for his money. At least it would have been nice to have had the chance to try.

Elayne Clift, a writer in Saxtons River, Vt., is a regular contributor to The Keene Sentinel and The Brattleboro Reformer. Her latest book, a collection of short stories, is The Limits of Love (Xlibris, 2003).

Women’s Rights and Media Challenges
Full with ambition but with little professional experience, I started my career seven years ago facing huge challenges. As a young woman journalist, it was a very heavy burden to head the programming department at Al-Quds Educational Television (AETV), the community relations’ branch of the Institute of Modern Media (IMM) at Al-Quds University in Ramallah.

At the time, the Palestinian television experience was still immature as Palestinians have never had their own television stations. Soon after, this experience turned into a unique phenomenon resulting in the establishment of 32 private television stations and one government-owned land and satellite station.

The large number of television stations opened the spectrum for female journalists to enter the media market and compete with male journalists on professional, managerial and technical levels.

The challenge to establish an educational TV station was even harder since the objectives of such a station were unusual. Therefore, I did not know whom to learn from and where to start, bearing in mind one main goal - to use my position for the promotion of women’s rights and gender equity through media.

The means to achieve this goal were no less of a challenge, so I started collecting and gathering documentary films and visual material by calling producers and directors nation-wide to convince them of the importance of broadcasting their productions. Another method was to host different local experts on women’s rights and issues in a number talk show programs.

Once well established, AETV, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program, produced six documentary films on gender and development. The purpose of this production was to introduce positive role models to the younger generation. The films were dubbed and distributed among a network of six TV stations and were screened on different occasions locally, regionally, and internationally.

Five years from the date when I stated my professional career, I was able to establish a Gender and Media Department at the IMM, the first of its kind in Palestine. With funding from the Ford Foundation, the Department launched its first media production of twelve TV episodes, including twelve field reports and twelve drama scenes that shed the light on gender and development issues like education, reproductive health, human rights, and domestic violence. To ensure a large outreach, the programs were dubbed and distributed to other TV stations.

Out of the belief that Palestinians spend many hours watching television, the sole purpose of my work was to use television not only for entertainment but also for educational purposes. A study conducted by UNICEF in 2000, found that 87% of the Palestinians watch TV. This percentage alerted me to use TV as an awareness-raising tool. I wanted to be involved as a journalist within the community issues in general.

Networking with Palestinian women organizations was done to encourage them to express their issues and concerns though television. As a result, a number of co-produced talk show programs and public awareness spots were shown on different television stations.

As a journalist, I believe that social and cultural change is an accumulative and complicated process but it is the duty of journalists to play an active role in their communities and serve their interests. And this is the biggest challenge.

Benaz Somiry Batrawi is a freelance journalist and consultant on Media and Gender Issues in Ramallah, Westbank.

Issues Facing Women in U.S. Journalism
Women no longer face overt discrimination in U.S. journalism, but they still have not reached equality with men. There are many individual success stories. Jill Abramson, for example, recently was named a managing editor of The New York Times, the first women to reach this rank.

Yet, women’s progress as a group in newspapers has stalled. The percentage of women in newsrooms of daily newspapers stands at 37 percent for two years in a row, while women represent 34 percent of all newsroom supervisors for the second consecutive year, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. By contrast, the percentage of minority journalists has risen slightly, from 11.64 percent to 12.07 percent.

Newsroom employment falls out of line with the number of women students in journalism schools where more than 64 percent of the student body is female, as reported by University of Georgia research. Nationally, women make up half the professional and managerial work force, a fact indicating journalism is less hospitable for women than other fields.

In local broadcasting, women, unlike minorities, are making slow gains. The number of local women news directors is gradually increasing with women holding 26.5 percent of these television jobs but only 14.4 percent in radio, according to the 2003 Radio Television News Directors’ Association/Ball State University annual survey. Overall, women constitute more than 39 percent of the local television and 24 percent of the radio work force. Minorities are dropping in percentage terms, with minority staff declining from 20.6 to 18.1 percent in television and from 8 to 6.5 percent in radio.

The difficulty women and minorities have in moving to the top is illustrated by the fact no representatives of either group apparently are being considered as replacements for the three network television news anchors (Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings), as they approach retirement.

A recent study blamed a male-dominated newsroom culture for holding women back. Conducted by the American Press Institute and the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, it surveyed 273 newspaper editors, 202 male and 71 female. It found 45 percent of the women were "career-conflicted," uncertain about their futures. By comparison, 55 percent, termed "career-confident," expected to make career moves, although possibly outside of newspapers. Two out of three of the women worried about advancement perceived a preference by their bosses for males in top jobs. Far more than the men, the women said they expected to leave their current employer or the news industry entirely.

In Harvard’s Nieman Reports, Jodi Enda, past president of JAWS (Journalism & Women Symposium), commented: Though "we no longer sit in the balcony [a reference to the days when the National Press Club segregated women], neither do we have the best seats in the house." Women as a group still are blocked from moving ahead by old-boy networks, as well as the need to juggle family responsibilities with demanding working conditions.

Dr. Maurine H. Beasley is a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.

Women Journalists in Japan? Now That is News!
Looking for Japanese female journalists is a bit like trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We all want to believe they exist, but the evidence is, at best, circumstantial. This is not to suggest that Japanese women are excluded from careers in journalism. Japanese law prohibits such overt and obvious discrimination. More accurately, given the social/cultural realities in play, women are generally less inclined to consider journalism as a viable career choice.

Understanding this situation requires a brief analysis of both the practice of Japanese journalism and the nature of Japanese society. In terms of media sophistication and the concept of a free and independent press, Japan still has a ways to go. Investigative reporting, asking hard, critical questions, is considered ill mannered and unnecessarily disruptive. Japanese society prides itself, above all, on the idea of social harmony. In terms of keeping the crime rate low, not to mention greatly reducing the number of potential law suits (as well as the need for lawyers), this is a positive thing. But it also seriously restricts the scope and effectiveness of journalists.

A Japanese journalist lives or dies, career-wise, on his or her ability to function within what are called press clubs. Every government ministry, agency and institutional organization has one. Working effectively requires being accepted into the club hierarchy; staying in requires reporting only what the club's official spokesperson relates as newsworthy. Attempting to operate outside the prescribed information box is the surest way to get re-assigned to covering rice harvests, or flower arrangement festivals.

Given a patriarchal society with rigorous traditional codes of behavior in which male journalists tolerate professional emasculation, what are the prospects for women interested in journalism? Japan's somewhat questionable commitment to democracy and equal rights has ostensibly opened the door for women to pursue their 'dream,' even if it includes working in an area that men are considered more qualified for, and as long as they are willing to accept their gender-imposed limitations.

To a large degree, women in Japan are still conditioned to buy into the cultural myth that their role is to work for a short time after graduating from college, than devote themselves to their husband's welfare and the raising of children. Defying this cultural imperative, while recently more common, continues to incur social disapproval. Women intent upon a professional career in journalism must also face the exclusionary, 'club' mentality, which defines the male-dominated media.

There is, however, the occasional and noteworthy exception to the rule. During the most recent war in Iraq, Hiromi Imaizumi, who works for a Tokyo television company, became the first Japanese female journalist to be on the ground in a war zone reporting the news. For a portion of the fighting, she was actually embedded with American troops, an assignment most of her male colleagues had no interest in taking on. Not that her reports made the war any more palatable to the Japanese public, but they did offer a different perspective; a woman's voice, insights and feelings in the midst of yet another male-inspired catastrophe. More importantly, it served as a signal to other aspiring Japanese women journalists that doing the unthinkable just might be possible.

Bruce Leigh is an associate professor in the English department at Shokei Women’s Junior College.

Women Journalists Remain a Korean Rarity

Despite significant improvements in the status of women in Korean society in general over the past few decades, journalism is a field where women’s participation remains relatively low. According to the Korean Female Journalists Association (KFJA), women account for 10.4 percent of the total (4,402) Korean journalists working in 18 major newspapers and broadcasting companies based in Seoul at the end of 2002.

But compared with several years ago, the figure is still a remarkable improvement. The number of female journalists has almost doubled in most Korean news organizations for the past five or six years. At a leading daily in Seoul, for example, the percentage of women among its reporters and editors rose to 10.7 in October 2002 from 6 percent in May 1997. At the public Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), the number of female reporters and editors increased from 21 in December 1998 to 48 in October 2002.

This phenomenon is related to the overall tendency in Korea where women’s role is greatly expanding in most fields including the judiciary, officialdom and academia. But it also reflects the changes that have taken place in the Korean media industry.

In recent years, Korean newspapers have drastically increased their number of pages. Most dailies now publish sections to separately cover business, lifestyle, leisure & sports, and entertainment. Growth in the volume of newspapers has naturally brought about needs for more stories, especially in the lifestyle and entertainment sections, topics which are generally regarded as belonging to a woman’s world. Because of the new social recognition of women as consumers, broadcasting companies also air more programs and news aimed at women in order to attract these audiences. As a result, media companies have needed more female journalists than ever before to meet these demands.

For this reason, many of the female journalists are young with less than five years experience in journalism. A recent KFJA’s survey found that of the 462 women who were working for 18 major newspaper and broadcasting companies, 198 (42.8 percent) had less than five years experience and 99, had between five to 10 years. The number of women who work as editors or in higher positions was a mere 41.

Women’s roles in the newsroom tend to be limited to the jobs of writing cultural and lifestyle stories or making up newspaper pages, although this tendency is also slowly changing. The KFJA poll notes that of the 462 female journalists in Korea, only 15 are covering political news, while 96 are writing cultural and lifestyle stories. Ninety-four are working at the news desk, 62 at the business desk, 59 at the city desk, seven at the sports desk, and 34 at the international news desk. No major dailies in Seoul have ever had a woman as managing editor or politics editor, wit the exception of an English-language daily and a sports newspaper.

In a survey by the Korea Press Foundation’s survey last summer, 94 percent of female journalists said they feel they are discriminated against and 52 percent of their male counterparts agreed. They claim they are discriminated against in allocation of jobs and promotion, given less chances for accumulating diversified experience and often excluded from private meetings with higher-ups.

This tendency is attributed not only to the conservative nature of Korean news organizations and society, but also to the conservative family system, in which child-rearing is still considered the job of women. To be a journalist in Korea, however, often requires both men and women to sacrifice their private life. Reporters and editors are expected to work from morning until night even during the weekends. They also work on national holidays without due additional payments. This system often leads female journalists, especially married women with children, to make a choice between their career and family.

Despite these tough conditions, journalism is gaining popularity in Korea as a career for women. Women form a majority in most of the journalism schools in Korea. This trend is partly due to the extreme popularity of celebrity female television broadcasters and the waning popularity of journalism as career for male students. If the current rate of increase in the number of female journalists continues for whatever reasons, I believe the day is not far away when "the threshold for critical mass" is reached in Korean newsrooms for more active roles of women.

Hyeh-won Kim worked for The Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper published in Seoul, for 25 years until December 31, 2002. She served as reporter, politics editor, culture editor, editorial writer and assistant managing editor.

Contemporary Issues Facing African Women Journalists

Feminism is a phenomenon that is still new to Africa. This novelty is even more pronounced in the media, therefore making the task of writing a 500-word essay on contemporary issues facing African women journalists a tall order. There is a whole deluge of such issues and given the word-limitation, I chose to dwell on an issue - close to my heart - that I succinctly label: victimization. I must hasten to mention though that victimization too has several prongs and I shall concentrate on a few.

Researching victimization in South Africa, Zambia and Malawi, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the issue is in its epidemic levels. Women journalists have been victimized in a countless number of ways. These include low prevalence of women journalists in the media, a stifling of their voices, and the problem women being kept down on the promotion ladder.

On the low prevalence of women journalists in the media compared to their male counterparts, the Rhodes Journalism Review, summarized these numbers in South Africa:
- Only 36% of editorial staff (that's journalists, photographers, production staff etc.) in South Africa are women.
- At newsroom management level (news editor, production editor and above) only 24% of decision-makers are women.
- At most senior levels, there are 14 editors overseeing newspapers - not one of them is a woman.

In Malawi and Zambia, the statistics are even more gloomy. Scholar Robert Jamieson writes that in Malawi no more than 15 percent of all media practitioners are women. In a Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) study conducted in September 2002 female radio reporters in Zambia comprised only 33 percent. With regard to print reporters, the statistic was a shocking 16 percent. Print journalism seems to be the most notorious for victimizing women. According to the MISA study in the whole of Southern Africa that comprises 12 countries, women journalists only account for 22 percent. These glaring statistics are despite the fact that my own research on student journalists in South Africa and Zambia shows that journalism schools are churning out more female than male journalists (61% to 39%).

From the perspective of stifling of female voices and women being kept down on the promotion ladder, Chris Vick in Rhodes Journalism Review gives an interesting account. He notes that during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in South Africa, the press, despite widely covering these hearings, gave no coverage to a submission that was made by a female journalist — Nomavenda Mathiane. Mathiane had submitted that: "For years, editors and news editors have relegated black women journalists to fill the women's pages. Women were kept down. Men were earmarked for promotion and [women's] work was hardly recognised. Even if a woman had written a story, she was not given credit for it." Mathiane's sentiments are by no means unique to South Africa alone. They are the order of the day in most African countries, calling for an immediate and deliberate awareness program to be set in motion.

Twange Kasoma is currently a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.