Newsrooms are increasingly becoming a women's world. Traditionally deemed as a profession too demanding for women, journalism is now a career pursued by more and more well-educated, aspiring young women in China. Female journalists had reasons to celebrate their growing presence in this noble business of letting people know.

By the end of March 2005, 38 percent of press pass-holders in China were women. In Shanghai, of 3,930 press passes issued by that date, 40 percent were awarded to women, according to the State Press and Publication department.

The percentage is much higher than that of a decade ago, when the newsrooms across the country were mostly populated by men. However, it still does not match the percentage of women in Chinese society generally: 48.5 percent.

Given time, though, women are likely to become the dominant sex in newsrooms, especially given the number of female journalism students who are greatly outnumbering their male counterparts.

Take the Journalism School of Fudan University for example. In its graduate class for this year, female students outnumber the male graduates 70 percent to 30 percent. Most other journalisms schools in the city offer a similarly lopsided gender ratio.

Are women nowadays more interested in journalism?

Probably. But the dearth of men at the journalism schools can be viewed as symptomatic of a larger failure in China's education system. Most schools that offer an education in the liberal arts, particularly language schools, have the same problem. Promising young men are either less interested, or their test scores, which mainly reflect a person's ability to memorize knowledge, were not of a high enough standard to allow them access to these schools.

A more human angle

If people consider what this means for the near future the growing presence of women in the newsroom must be a change for the better.

Women's involvement in the news business has transformed and expanded the agenda of news. They bring a different, more human perspective to the news, at least some of the time.

Through years, women have broadened and diversified news coverage.

Contents that once thought of as "women's news," such as health, family issues, childcare, domestic violence, education and the like, are now considered to be of general interest to all readers.

There are some advantages to being a woman in the field of journalism.

In some cases interviewees, particularly male interviewees, are more open in giving information to female journalists than to men, but the reverse also happens.

Generally speaking, however, it is a hard job for women. They do not have much private time; it is common to work on weekends; worse, coping with the hectic schedule, it is tough to have children while working as a journalist.

Maybe that explains why there are few women who have endured the macho arena of reporting and climbed the corporate ladder to the top.

A survey published lately by the Shanghai Journalism Review showed most media organizations in Shanghai are managed by men. Close to 90 percent of the managerial positions are held by men. That means men make most of the decisions about what does and what does not constitute news, the report said.

Whatever the future may hold for women in journalism, there is one thing they should all be clear about: News is not defined by gender. In the end, the news is the news, whether it is reported by a woman or a man.

The standards of accuracy, fairness and ethics apply equally to all journalists, regardless of their gender.

(Shanghai Daily March 9, 2006)