Nandita Sengupta, TNN
A documentary on Khabar Lahariya, the UP-based rural women’s media network, has reached the Oscars—a measure of its uniqueness, that since 2011 when it started, KL remains a one-of-its-kind women-led team reporting from the remote rural expanses, talking their issues, speaking their tongue.
In 2015 KL switched to an all-online format, print proving unsustainable. The message, KL’s all-women team recognised, must be made medium-agnostic and tech must be harnessed. And that is how it has been for very many women in the media for different reasons.
In 1968, Gita Aravamudan, 21, became Bengaluru’s first woman reporter. In 2022, she has “almost completely switched” to online platforms, with a rare column in print. “I was told some time ago they (print media she wrote for) wanted younger women,” Aravamudan laughed. In 1996, when Bhasha Singh moved to Delhi from Lucknow with an MA in Economics she became the first woman reporter-trainee in the first financial paper in Hindi: Amar Ujala’s Karobar.
“There was much mirth when I expressed a wish to cover the mandis. ‘Now women will go to mandis,’ went the drift amid much laughter.” But she made a place for herself in print. Today, she is making videos for online publishing. The returns are much less, but “I feel energised,” she says. The rare sports journalist when she started, Sharda Ugra, is a trailblazer who completed 30 years of stellar sports journalism in 2019. Ugra found her last stint at cricinfo.com the most nourishing and collaborative space after her early days in Mid Day in the 1990s under the mentorship of Anil Dharker among others.
From 1960 to 2020, women journalists have lived inside a paradox. English-language media welcomed women years before their regional language counterparts. But all newsrooms have been less accommodating on equal work; camaraderie and mentorship aside. Zero—the number of women in leadership roles (editor-in-chief, managing editor, executive editor, bureau chief) in Indian newspapers with highest readership as per IRS, a UN Women report in 2019 found. In magazines this was 14%, in television 21% and on digital portals 26%. Women made up just about 25% of writers of news, features, analyses and opinion. “In the top decile of writers by articles published, women’s representation was highest in The Economic Times (33%), lowest in The Telegraph (14%),” the UN Women Report said.
The numbers reflect what is known. Yet, despite the inequality in pay or the beat bias against women or the urge to bench newly married reporters and young mothers, women journalists have prevailed. An oft-repeated story of Prabha Behl—India’s first woman chief reporter at Hindustan Times—is how she reported on the 1965 India-China war though permission was denied. She sent the news, it was published. Authentic voices on politics are keenly followed: Neerja Chowdhury, Arati Jerath, Seema Chishti, Barkha Dutt, Radhika Ramaseshan… the list is long for English language writers alone—the one thing common is they all speak outside of the newsroom. Ugra says, “I may have been the only woman sports writer then, but now there are 80 women writing on sports across all media.”
A Soft Launch… Gender roles kicked in with more women joining since the 1980s. “As newspapers felt the need to write on arts, music, films and culture, women were given these areas; not because they would do a better job but because the males believed it wasn’t for men to write on such matters,” says Aravamudan. In the mid-1980s, journalist Padma Shri Mrinal Pande’s decision to brand new Hindi women’s magazine Vama as ‘The thinking woman’s magazine’ was greeted with derision and guffaws from the men in marketing. Pande speaks of responses on the lines of ‘What is a thinking woman?’.
But she had the support of owners Indu Jain, daughter Nandita and especially cousin Richa Jain. “You are strongest when other women support you,” says Pande. Later, as Editor-Views of multi-edition daily Hindustan, proprietor Shobhana Bhartia had her back. Pande was the first woman to head Prasar Bharti in 2010, a fillip for all women in media, till in 2014 the senior bureaucrat in charge told her, “We need younger faces.” Ageism, lookism, family status are a constant drumbeat. Years into the profession, Singh says nothing prepared her for the spontaneous comment from an editor at Outlook Hindi: “If I knew you have a small child, I would not have given you the job.” All in jest.
Seizing Online Space: Downsides notwithstanding, hundreds of women joined the profession, especially during the television boom, and fell off too. The media industry too was entering a phase of rising costs and slowing revenue. Pande says much of the attitudes towards women is fallout of “insecurity born of uncertain times for the industry. Insecurity about the politics, insecurity about revenues… the unions disappeared…. Men, whenever insecure, will and do take it out on a woman.” The Global Media Monitoring Project 2020 reported “a sharp drop in the number of female reporters in print, from 43% to 13%, and from 60% to 52% in television” between 2015 and 2020.
A younger generation went independent—gig reporters living story to story without the backing of any media organisation, union or collective—working for multiple online media, using Twitter and Instagram to grow audiences. Raksha Kumar, who will cover UP polls for Washington-based non-profit National Public Radio went independent years ago. “I did not see myself fit any newsroom,” says Raksha, though at NDTV, Scroll and NYT, she worked with women editors and thoroughly enjoyed it, the mentoring and the approach. “Women editors craft stories differently. I chose to go independent but now younger reporters don’t have that choice.”
Questions Of Faith & Safety: In 2021 Tithiya Sharma, organiser at Gather Sisters, a women-centric community concern, arranged 30 online chats over seven weeks with 40 women journalists from every state. “What came through was a loss of faith in the media industry among young reporters and its commitment towards their well-being,” she says.
This lack of faith rises also from the mixed signals from media in coverage of MeToo allegations within the industry. When Priya Ramani, on the board of Article14.com, won a defamation suit brought against her by journalist-politician-ex minister MJ Akbar, it was a nod to women’s status. The message from the industry was otherwise—Akbar rehabilitated in a senior role in Zee Media’s Wion news channel. Come 2022 and online violence is journalists’ biggest concern. As Nobel Prize winner journalist Maria Ressa said, “Online violence is violence. Women journalists are at the epicentre of risk… This pandemic of misogyny and hatred needs to be tackled now.”
Indians know this well. On the BulliBai app assault, veteran Arfa Khannum Sherwani tweeted on January 4, “We are the stories we are reporting on. Communal targeting & humiliation is part of the experience of being a Muslim Woman Journalist in India.” On January 22, in her Washington Post column, Barkha Dutt wrote: “A few years ago… my personal number was shared on a sex escort website. WhatsApp deluged with pictures of genitalia…. The immediate trigger was… I used Twitter to call out… targeting of innocent Kashmiri students…”
Kashmiri journalist Quratulain Rehbar had reported on the SulliDeals assault in 2021. To her horror she was the one under attack on BulliBai. “To be honest, I wasn’t hurt. I was numb. I have always wanted to just focus on my work,” Rehbar, who started reporting in 2017, told Outlook magazine.
Journalism that matters is possible only on the realisation within media that journalists matter. Women journalists are not stepping back or down. The mikes are on and fingers are flying over keyboards. As they hold the line in desperate circumstances, women yet stand their ground where the story is. Khabar Lahariya’s journalists showed the way.