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Perceived as a liability to begin with, now accepted as an asset… you have come a long way, baby! This immortal cigarette ad line, best tells the place Indian women journalists have made for themselves today in the erstwhile ‘men only’ newsroom. No doubt it has been a four decade bumpy ride for women scribes in the rough but heady world of printing ink and now of sound bytes. They have fought, toiled doubly harder than men colleagues to prove ‘we can do it too’ and even sweet-talked to make a place for themselves in the media business. And to hand it to them, they have done it with notice-worthy verve and elan.

The journey of women journalists in our country is more than a mere tale of personal and collective challenges taken up by them. It goes beyond women storming a male bastion or trying to break glass ceilings. No doubt their story reflects the social changes over time in the gender context, smashing of stereotypes and the coming of opportunity for the bold and the beautiful to display intellectual prowess over physical attributes. But, more than their arrival on the media scene, it is their work content that has to be taken into account when studying the evolution of the news business in India.      

Significantly, the advent of women in journalism and their writing, has introduced a new dimension to news content. To them must go the credit for widening the content and changing the profile of ‘news of interest to women’ earlier featured in the inside pages of newspapers and magazines. Women journalists have pushed it beyond flower shows, baby contests, how-to-be-a-kitchen-queen recipes, tips on gardening and grooming. As news reporters, feature writers and columnists, they have assiduously worked to ensure that it now encompasses crime against women, laws that affect them directly, their rights, their tribulations and triumphs. Now the range of content of news for women holds substantially more.

More crucial is that women scribes have worked to ensure that gender issues are today treated as hard news. This marks a watershed in the history of the print and electronic media in India. Women journalists have played a major role in converting events/happenings concerning women and gender issues to hard news and consequently freeing it from the confines of soft news. How have women journalists achieved this?

Simply by going beyond an event to connect dots, read a pattern and highlight it in their writings as a manifestation of male chauvinism that has lead to social ills which in turn have a direct adverse impact on women. They have reported happenings from a woman’s point of view
To illustrate this, let us take the example of dowry deaths. Initially, cases of brides and newly weds being burnt or dying under mysterious circumstances were treated as routine crime stories. Diligent reporting over a couple of years led to the emergence of a pattern that made activists and law makers sit up. This is not to say that male reporters did not do their bit, but it was the woman reporter that went out of her way to pick up each such case reported till it could not be ignored by others on the beat. Worth mentioning is that at that time there were only two women crime reporters in Delhi! Credit must be given to women journalists for sensitising their male colleagues and editors to the issue of sex determination tests on pregnant women to prevent birth of a girl child, domestic violence, rising rape graph, trafficking of women and sexual harassment at the work place. Stories on these issues are now dug up, researched and written by journalists across gender lines and have gone a long way in trying to usher in change for the better.     

     
While highlighting the negative, women scribes have also written about the positives in the life of a woman today. To mention a few, take a look at the coverage given today to the Women’s Reservation Bill, the success of women at the panchayat level, their role in micro financing and self help groups. Women journalists have introduced sensitivity towards gender issues. They made news rooms across the country see sense in treating news stories about women as news as women make up more than 53 per cent of the population. The result is that over the years, slowly but surely, decision makers in media organizations have started to treat stories about women and for women as front page stuff, breaking news and editorial material that makes headlines. Now gender issue stories are used on merit and not as a kind gesture from a hard boiled news editor.    

It all started when women made their way into the field of news reporting in the early ‘70s. They came into hostile newspaper offices where a woman journalist’s only place was the features desk. As a couple of us stood our ground on being reporters, our initial challenge was to prove ourselves better than the men. That we did by (successfully) handling the tough beats like crime and politics and being the ‘man’ on the spot. For good measure we threw in holding a cigarette, nonchalantly mouthing four letter words and dressing up to look casual and untidy. Anything to be accepted as part of the boy’s gang! But to be noticed and get our stories into print we worked overtime to get in something new. It was this constant search for a new angle, along with an inborn sensitivity to matters of concern to our sisters that brought about intense coverage of gender issues.

Women journalists have proved their competence is at par with men when it comes to covering everything, from politics to commerce and defence. A plus in their favour is that they excel when it comes to gender writing. Add to this the electronic media’s quest for a viewer friendly face. Here the women score higher. So from being a liability, they have turned into assets! Unfortunately this is true only in the case of the English language media and the world of TV. Women journalists in the Hindi language and non metro cities (the few exceptions prove the point) have to still cover the distance from the features desk to the reporter’s room and find the space to have a say in deciding what should be the news of the day. But as all women know…nothing comes without a struggle.