Q&A: More Women Journalists Doesn’t Mean More Gender Awareness

Young Indian women are taking to journalism in droves, but Ammu Joseph, author of several authoritative books on women in media, believes that these numbers do not necessarily translate into gender awareness. IPS Asia-Pacific's Ranjit Devraj interviews Ammu Joseph, Indian journalist, author and media watcher.

Excerpts:

On the feminisation of the Indian media...

The situation has certainly improved across the world – and in India – since then. However, we need to be clear what we mean by feminisation. Do the evidently larger numbers of women in the media today amount to feminisation? Or does the term imply a process of becoming more "feminine" or of taking on a "feminine" quality, as some definitions have it?

On how far women have come in the Indian news media...

In many ways it would seem that women have arrived, are doing well and are likely to stay and succeed in the news media. That’s the good news. At the same time it is a fact that we really know little about the terms of employment and conditions of work in the media today – for both men and women.

On women's success in the electronic media...

Women’s visibility in television news, for example, has been recognised worldwide as a fairly complex phenomenon which involves a number of factors, not all of them related to professional values.

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