A desire of being journalist is, even unconsciously, a willing to take part in Fourth Estate. And obviously, men are still ruling the world in each sector, even they try to pretend they acknowledge the need of equally chances among genders, there has still not enough been done to make it real.
Every monitoring survey indicates that there is no significant disproportion in number of women and men journalists working for media. European Federation of Journalist proved that in Europe average number of working female journalists is 47%. That is almost a half. The problem is not he number then but something more intangible, so called which make it difficult for women to cover hard topics or issues which are concerned as not ‘female’. Why it is happening like this that women are perceived as those who are not suitable for dealing with complicated issues or even can not manage the media?
There are a few factors that make it possible. The most obvious one is that nowadays media are linked to the power in incredible scale like it has never been seen before. These two words ‘media’ and ‘power’ have become almost synonyms. That is the media which creates the world, shapes people’s thoughts, creates phenomenon, make profit. Everybody knows that media has the power of creating the politician, celebrities, people who are known as heroes. It can also destroys them in one day, buries authorities.
Media are described as the Forth Estate, but to be honest and reflect actual situation they have become the First Estate, factual virtue. Even the most powerful governments have no such influence on people’s mind like media have, unless they possess the media. That is the one of the most important reasons why women are under-represented in high-quality news. If the media are related to the power, or even more, they actually are the power, so they are owned by men. Important politicians, managers in international corporations, owners of giant media outlets are mostly men. That fact was constituted by long history, when men as stronger representatives of mankind, had been taking the leadership in every field. Young boys were raised in conviction that it is natural for them to get all the highest peaks wherever they decide to go. On the other hand girls’ education looked slightly different. Young women were taught that the best thing for them is to learn very useful things which mainly considered household and children. They were not learnt how to discover and penetrate the world. The system of education is changing slowly but above belief about women’s role in society is deeply rooted in women’s mind.
The other problem which legitimates the lack of women in hard news coverage is the perception of females as decorative objects, not specialist but the most likely an assistant. Again glass ceiling. Will we ever be able to change this stereotype?
Tags: 4th Estate, jouralism, women in journalism
