Economic empowerment of women journalists in Kerala

Abstract

Media hasan implausible role in the life of people. It educates and divulges knowledge to the society. As a profession, it has opened new opportunities for women to share information and explore their talents. The onset of the era of information technology provided women journalists new opportunities in the industry. However, women have to face challenges in sustaining in the media industry. As a result, the work participation of women in the state is bizarrely low when compared to their male counterparts. Only 12 per cent of women journalists are represented in popular media organizations in Kerala. Women journalists are far behind in their economic status and empowerment. The present study analyzed the economic empowerment of women journalists in Kerala. The study further investigated into the work participation of women journalists and the challenges faced by them in personal and professional life.The first objective set up under the study is to understand the work participation of women journalists in Print, Electronic and New Media in Kerala. Kruskal Wallis Test, Regression Test, ANOVA Test for goodness of fit, Friedman Test and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test were used to analyse the work participation of women in media in Kerala. The time period considered for the study was from the year 2010 to the year 2022.The findings of the analysis revealed that the largest number of women journalists were found to be working in Print Media followed by Television, Online Media and Radio. The work participation of women found an increasing trend except in Television channels during this period. However, except for Radio, all other media observed lower participation of women over the 13 years considered for the study. The present study explicated that the maximum participation of women in media in Kerala was only 12.8 per cent and the average female work participation rate was 11.4 per cent. In Kerala the rate of increase in work participation of the women journalists in media per year was only 0.246 per cent and it is one of the most important issues to be considered in the scenario of female work participation of the state.The study made a detailed analysis of the work participation of women journalists in media in the districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode, where the highest number of women journalists were found. Except the media Television, all other media exposed a positive change in the number of women journalists in the three districts. The district-wise comparison brought out variations in the work participation of women in different media. In Print and New media, the district of Ernakulam had more women working journalists followed by Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, whereas in Television, Thiruvananthapuram came first followed by Kozhikode and Ernakulam respectively. Radio has news units only in the districts of Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. Though, largest number of women journalists were found in Thiruvananthapuram, the average work participation of women was found to be more in the district of Kozhikode.The second objective of the study was to measure the economic empowerment of women in media in Kerala. The statistical tools such as; Z-Test, One-Sample Z Statistics, Factor Analysis, Karl Pearson Correlation, Multiple Regression Analysis and ANOVA were used and Economic Empowerment Index was calculated to estimate the economic empowerment of women in media. The study found out that 54.6 per cent of the women journalists had higher participation and decision-making regarding their economic affairs. On the other hand, 31.6 per cent of the women journalists had medium participation (69.1 to 84.6) and 13.8 per cent had lower decision-making power (<69.1) regarding their economic participation in the household matters. The present study calculated an index of Economic Empowerment and found out that 84.7 per cent of the women journalists are not fully economically empowered. The study brought out another important finding relating to the social scenario of Kerala that no representation of the women from the Scheduled Tribe communities were found working in media. The representation from the Scheduled Caste and Backward Communities were negligible. The study found out that 98.8 per cent of the women journalists were from the so called forward, elite or general communities.The third objective of the study was to analyse the challenges faced by the women journalists in personal and professional life. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was employed to find out the challenges faced by the women journalists in their personal and professional life. Out of the eleven important challenges, the significant factors were combined to four. The first factor was the financial instability, lack of employment and career opportunities (19.8 %), the second factor which affected was the unfavourable working conditions (19.6%), the third factor which challenged the women media persons were family related issues (14.5%) and the fourth and last factor was Gender discrimination and harassments (12.8%). The study suggested that the fair salary, promotions and advances and infrastructural facilities rendered by organizations and government pro-economic policies would enhance the economic empowerment of women in media.