Daily Times

At least 611 students were enrolled in the department of Mass Communication in Allama Iqbal Open University for the masters degree during this year 2019. Female accounted for 27 percent of the total students enrolled in the Mass Communication Department. Interestingly, 48 out of 133 female students are selected from Islamabad followed by the Rawalpindi where 21 out of 83 enrolled students are female.

Data shows that a large number of female students enrolling in Mass Communication or Journalism every year from different public or private universities. However, only few of them are seen practicing journalism after the completion of their education.

Responding to the question that why majority of female are not joining filed after completion of their education, Shamim Ashraf, first female editor of Azad Jammu Kashmir based newspaper, told Daily Times that harassment and transportation are the two basic reasons that restrict female journalists from their professional activities.

Elaborating her point of view, she said that harassment is not only touching someone physically, when a working female journalists went goes to cover any event everyone will look at her with greedy eyes, which disturbs her and finally she avoids to do reporting and prefer to work on the desk, she said.

Two years ago, Tanzeela Mazhar, a news anchor working for Pakistan Television, had registered a complaint against an official of her organization for harassing her as well as her colleague. According to Tanzeela, the harassment committee has, so far, made four times changes in their inquiry report but the report has neither been shared with the victim, nor with the public.

Following the unusual delay in the preparation of the report because of the influence of the ‘harasser party’, she took the case to a court which is currently undergoing proceedings.

Contrarily, fewer women continue pursuing the field in practice

Senior Journalist Afshan Qureshi, sharing her experience as Bureau Chief of a local newspaper, said that one thing that was disturbing her at that times was that the male staff was feeling their insult to work under a female. “Unfortunately in our society, males are not ready to admit a female as their boss or at senior positions, she added.

To a question regarding the harassment she said, a woman has seven senses instead of six, and she knows if anyone having bad intention for her, in such cases the female should remain more careful. Saima Bhatti, former office bearer of National Press Club said that she had never faced any problem while working in the field. “I cover crime and court which are considered as most tough beats in the journalists but even then I did not face any problems, the male colleagues are very cooperative”, she maintained.

It is very hard to measure the total strength of journalists because there is no data available in public sector although there are two departments to monitor the Media. First is PID working at federal level and second is DGPR working at provincial level. In this situation data provided by the Council of Pakistan Press Club, representing the journalists all over the Pakistan seemed to be close to the reality. According to the data provided by the CPPC total number of female journalists working in Punjab and Islamabad is 762 which is only 8 % of the total working journalists in Punjab and Islamabad.

Islamabad is leading with the number of 465 female journalists followed by the Lahore with 264 female journalists. However, in Rawalpindi only two female journalists are working practically in the field.

According to a survey report titled Working Conditions of Women Journalists in Pakistan, Less than one fourth of women journalists who reported sexual harassment at workplace bothered to report it. Women journalist who chose to report an incident of sexual harassment mostly (45 percent) reported it to their colleagues, probably to win moral support to stop recurrence of such incidents. 33 percent reported these incidents to someone in authority while 22 percent reported it to the employer.

Shakila Jalil, Joint Secretary National Press Club, said that media houses prefer to hire male journalists instead of female journalists mostly in the bureau’s because female journalists require more facilities like transport and others. She said that most of female journalists either left the profession or limit their profession to the desk only because of the harassment from both the colleagues and public. While in some cases female journalists has left their profession because of the family pressure, she added.