Media short of women's issues

JAKARTA: Local female journalists have to work harder for recognition than their overseas counterparts, a Fullbright scholar said yesterday.

Alice M. Klement told a discussion that local female journalists were challenged by the traditional belief that women should stay at home or stop working after having children.

"Not only does Indonesian print media have different kinds of challenge, women journalists here have to work even harder to get recognition," said Klement, who owns Choice Words -- a writing, editing, marketing and research body.

She cited pressure over what they wanted to but could not write as among the challenges facing local journalists.

"Journalists here are doing the hardest job in the world, and its even harder for women," she said.

Klement said the media had inadequate coverage of women's issues. In the last decade, only 34 percent of journalists in the American print media were women, and only 10 percent of them held top management or decision-making positions.

"Once a woman gets a position as a decision maker she usually tends to think of what the market wants, and the newspapers in the U.S. are mostly read by men," she said.

She said this happened because newspapers did not cover enough women's issues.

"And if they do", she said, "women are pictured in negative ways, for example, as unhealthy people, fearful of success, etc," she said, adding that this was a generalization.

The Indonesians at the discussion agreed. They said that local print media had to increase its coverage of women's issues. (12)