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Women in media: Unglamorous story

Rasheeda Bhagat

MANY of us in the media, who are out to reform the world, often forget to look within ourselves, examine our working conditions and consider how the sword we brandish against social ills could be used to clean up some of the mess within our own professio n.

This is even more true of those of us who are eager to rush in and write about crimes against women and highlight instances of gender discrimination within the home, the workplace, and in the big bad world.

The choice most women journalists who entered the profession in the 1970s and 1980s made in the area of specialisation has taken a curious turn. In the 1970s, a woman was considered `crazy' to opt for a field job and work as a reporter. She would do this at her own risk, against ``sane advice'' from seniors -- males, of course -- that respectable women did not get into the rough and tumble of journalism but worked at the desk. Here, their services would be valuable as they could polish or rewrite copy written shoddily by male colleagues.

As for outside work, at the most, they could attend music concerts, movie premiers and art exhibitions and write critical reviews. But if you opted to be a reporter and were thrust upon the bureau chief by the editor, all the poor man could think of was how to keep you out of trouble. Late-night assignments were out and so were beats such as crime and politics. The easiest assignment possible was reporting on women and children.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the few women reporters in the South fought tooth-and-nail their bureau chiefs' attempts to restrict them to reporting on women and children's affairs. Ironically, 20 years down the line, when we are in a position t o choose, many of us have opted to write on gender issues.

And when you write on such issues, you naturally report on violence and crimes against women, barriers to their entry and growth in the workplace, sexual harassment, discrimination and related issues.

As in other professions, it is certainly not smooth sailing for women in the media. But, as in other professions, here too, no barriers have proved strong enough to keep women out of what was once considered a male domain. You just have to look at the fr ont-page bylines in newspapers and the women correspondents and TV anchors to realise that women have finally arrived.

But is all hunky-dory for women in the media? Obviously not. A couple of years ago, a Bangalore-based freelance writer, Ms Ammu Joseph, set out on the task of scrutinising the ``spurt in the number and visibility'' of women in the Indian media.

Sponsored by Media Foundation, her study was brought out as the book Women in Journalism: Making News by Konark Publishers early this year. Over a period of three years, Ms Ammu Joseph went through the painstaking work of meeting almost 200 women journal ists and quizzing them on their progress and the problems they faced.

She has restricted the study to the print media, ``despite the high visibility of female anchors and reporters on television news and current affairs programmes''. She feels that the status and problems faced by women in the audio-visual media require a wholly different study as there are essential differences between the two mediums.

Ms Ammu Joseph's work is an exhaustive study of the problems women journalists face -- work versus the family, fighting stereotypes, male prejudices, grappling with late hours and, quite often, fighting for the right to get `tough assi gnments'. In this context, a workshop organised in Bangalore recently by Ms Ammu Joseph and a Bangalore-based NGO, Voices, was an eye opener.

About 30 women journalists participated from five States (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu), representing the media in six languages (Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and English). What was most refreshing was that all the 30 women met as equals , irrespective of their age, seniority or designations.

One of the myths this workshop shattered pertained to the supposedly better status of women in a matriarchal society such as Kerala. A senior Kerala journalist now working with a frontline TV network pointed out: ``Don't go by the picture of Kerala proje cted by the media. The State has got a glorified picture of gender equality, but when it comes to translating this concept from paper to reality, the whole thing falls flat on its face.''

According to the picture presented by some of the seniormost women journalists of Kerala -- Ms Parvathi Devi and Ms Leela Menon were both present -- women constitute hardly one per cent of journalists in the Malayalam media. The situation is only slight ly better in the English media, they said.

The participants from Kerala pointed out that in Malayala Manorama -- the highest circulating daily in the State -- there are only four women journalists. While Mathrubhumi has five, Deshabhimani -- the CPI(M) party organ -- which is the third la rgest Malayalam daily in Kerala, has 10.

Apparently, in many media organisations in Kerala, women do not even have separate toilets, leave alone rest rooms.

Said one of the Kerala delegates: ``In many media organisations, when repeated representations were made to the management on issues such as toilets and rest rooms for women and transport following night duty, they brushed them aside saying that providin g all this would entail a financial burden on the organisation. I know women journalists face this problem in many States, but Kerala clearly takes the cake.''

If this is the pathetic condition of women journalists in the so-called matriarchal Kerala, conditions in high-profile Andhra Pradesh are no better. According to a paper presented at the workshop, in the whole State, there are only 40-50 women journalist s in the Telugu and English press. Of these, hardly five are reporters and the rest work on the News desk. A senior journalist who represents a leading Karnataka English daily in Hyderabad recounted the ghastly story of how she was not able to get a room in a single hotel in Vijayawada while covering the last elections.

``I was accompanied by a male journalist from another daily, and the hotel management was ready to give us a double room but refused to give me a single room. I was outraged and said: I don't want to share a room with him. Only after we threatened to cal l up the local MP, did one of the hotels reluctantly agree to give me a separate room.''

The manager's reason was simple and atrocious; single women carry on the flesh trade from hotel rooms and, hence, they are wary of giving them rooms!

If this is the status of women journalists in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu is not exactly emancipated. Consider the heart-rending story related by a woman with 10 years experience in a popular Tamil magazine in Chennai. Hailing from a conservati ve Naidu family in a village in North Tamil Nadu, she was married at the age of 18. Her husband, with a substantive agricultural landholding, thought he was bestowing on her quite a status when he assigned her the task of working on the fields in a super visory capacity.

But this amazingly brave woman had another calling. ``In our village, women are not supposed to read anything because it might turn their head. So I used to hide and read some Tamil magazines.'' In one such magazine, she saw an ad for a short story compe tition, wrote one, and stealthily mailed it to the magazine office in Chennai. When she won the prize, her husband and his family thought it was an insult to them and she was warned not to pursue such activities.

Ignoring their warnings, she continued her writing pursuits and was selected for a journalism training course in Chennai. When she announced that she would join the course, and later take on a job as a journalist in Chennai, her husband dragged her to th e village panchayat. ``Those were the days of Auto Shankar (a dreaded serial killer in Chennai), and the panchayat threatened me that if I ever dared to go to Chennai, Auto Shankar would murder me.''

Ten years into the profession, she has done some daring assignments in places such as Calcutta and Mumbai. Her husband has shifted to Chennai and, according to her, is now engaged in spying on her, ``and even came to the station to drop me for this works hop because he wanted to make sure I was not taking off for a weekend with another man''.

``I have even taken beatings from him. I talk very little, but in the end I do what I have to do. I love this profession and I am not going to leave it... not even for my husband,'' she told the participants at the workshop.

Her story left many of us thinking how lucky we were, and promising ourselves that the next time we crib about little inconveniences, we should remember brave women such as this reporter from Chennai.

If at the end of the weekend the workshop left most of the participants, to quote Ms Ammu Joseph, ``extraordinarily exhilarated'', it had a lot to do with sharing such experiences. ``The extraordinary enthusiasm, openness, sincerity, positive/constructiv e thinking and cooperative/collaborative approach of all the participants,'' was something which made the workshop a memorable experience, added Ms Ammu Joseph.

(Feedback can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)