Women in news media in India are under-represented: Study

From ANI

London, Mar 23: A new study has found that women in India working for news media are under-represented.

The survey of 170,000 people in 522 news companies by the International Women's Media Foundation in Washington found that women were best represented in Europe and worst in Asia.

Across the entire newspaper, radio and television workforce studied, the survey found that men held 65 percent of jobs, compared to 35 percent held by women.

"There is still quite a lot of work to be done to achieve some sort of equal footing in the industry," the BBC quoted Liza Gross, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation, as saying.

Among the news organisations studied, the survey found the most gender equity in 85 newsrooms of Eastern Europe, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

There, men and women's salaries were comparable across all levels in the profession, a finding attributed to the Soviet-era practice of educating women and moving them into the work force in great numbers.

In 47 newsrooms surveyed in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, women were nearing parity with men among the ranks of "junior professionals", a category which included correspondents, writers, sub-editors, producers and presenters.

But the survey reported women hit a "glass ceiling" at the senior professional level, holding only roughly a third of jobs in middle management and a quarter in top management.

In the 14 newsrooms surveyed in the US, women comprised about 41 percent of the total workforce, but were under-represented in the executive ranks, filling only 23.3 percent of the top management jobs.

The study found the most under-represented women in 10 nations of Asia and the Pacific rim - Australia, Bangladesh, China, Fiji, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines and South Korea.


Copyright Asian News International/DailyIndia.com