He should boss, she should write

All over the world journalists are much more exposed to physical and verbal threats, online attacks, as well as humiliation, harassment and blackmail compared to men who are engaged in this profession. As many as 42,7 percent of female journalists face verbal attacks on a daily basis compared to 31 percent of male journalists, and women in journalism are at a much greater risk of threats, negative campaigns and discrediting on a professional and personal level, especially when they report on serious topics during the election period. campaign, Media Freedom Rapid Response data show.

Furthermore, various forms of harassment, insults, sexist comments and open threats to safety and life, including threats of rape and murder, in 60 percent of reported cases occur in the online sphere. Also of concern is the increase in physical attacks on female journalists while reporting on protests, as well as physical threats, injuries, arrests, detentions, criminal prosecutions, civil lawsuits, SLAPP lawsuits, defamation and insult lawsuits against female journalists around the world...

There are currently 19 female journalists in prison in China. In Belarus, more women are imprisoned than men engaged in journalism, 17 out of 32, and in Myanmar, female journalists experience serious physical injuries in prison, which is why many of them stay in prison hospitals.

LIST OF INSULTS AND THREATS

Devastating data apply to Serbia. One out of three women employed in the media in Serbia experienced sexual harassment, and seven out of ten were discriminated against either because of their age or because of their appearance, is one of the findings of the "Women in the Media" research conducted by the Initiative for Peaceful Change. In the research conducted by Nikola Jović and Rade Đurić as part of the project of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia "Empowered female journalists = informed citizens", published last year, a survey of female journalists in Serbia showed that as many as three out of four female journalists, while reporting or working on certain topics, they had to think about how much their safety, as well as the safety of their family, would be threatened if the text were published.

Then, as many as 44 percent of female journalists in Serbia do not feel free to do their work in a professional manner. Hate speech is the most common form of attack they face in the online space, especially when they report on crime and corruption, fan groups, criminal organizations, but also wars in the territories of the former Yugoslavia, refugees, migrants and the Church.

Despite this, only 17 percent of them report such attacks, and even 70 percent of female journalists are not satisfied with how state authorities react to reported threats.

Journalists in Serbia hear about themselves every day that they are "stupid", "ignorant", "nasty", "whores" and that they should give birth instead of thinking, that they are "anti-Serbs", "fascists" and "mercenaries", and the most common - "she's ugly", "she's fat", "look at how she's dressed", "she didn't take therapy", "she didn't take the medicine", shows a joint research by FPN, BIRN and NUNS "Safety of journalists in the digital environment".

THE ARMCHAIR IS MALE

Nevertheless, journalism at Belgrade and other universities in Serbia enrolls more female students than male students every year. At the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade (BU), as the oldest higher education institution where future journalists are educated in Serbia, in the last few decades the ratio of enrolled women and men follows the general national trend of enrollment in colleges and universities. According to the data of the Bureau of Statistics, in the school year 2023/24. 249.626 students were enrolled at all higher education institutions and at all degrees of study at BU - of the total number of students enrolled, 40,9 percent were men and 59,1 percent were women. This ratio is even more drastic when it comes to graduate students. The Bureau of Statistics shows that only last year, if you look at all higher education institutions and all levels of study, 38,9 percent of men and 61,1 percent of women graduated.

Despite this, women do not dominate managerial positions in journalism either in our country or in the world. In the global report on the position of women in media organizations, which included more than five hundred media companies in 60 countries, it is shown that men dominate in all management positions, but also in the positions of reporters and producers - only 36 percent of women do this work. In Serbia, it is even worse - although more than 60 percent of employees in domestic media are women, only 18 percent of them are in the positions of editor-in-chief, and most often in online media, according to data from the Autonomous Women's Center. And that, as well as previous studies by the Faculty of Political Sciences, warn that the imbalance is particularly noticeable in public media services, where all the main positions during the previous decades were held mostly by men.

It is also alarming that as many as 70 percent of female journalists are thinking about changing jobs, which supports all research findings that indicate that journalism, when it comes to women, is an increasingly difficult, difficult and unprofitable job.

REASONS FOR (NE)STAYING

As Professor Smiljana Milinkov from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad writes, women enter the journalism profession as "others", and regardless of their number in journalism, in the 21st century they are still poorly recognizable compared to men. So what is it that still motivates journalism students at Belgrade University to study journalism and stay in the profession?

"Vreme" spoke with six female students of the third and fourth year of undergraduate studies, as well as graduate journalists who recently completed journalism studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences. Their answers indicate that everything is not just a gender dimension, but that from their perspective the matter is much more complicated.

According to Milana Milošević, the fact is that female journalists are not in an enviable position in society. "Our mentality is still such that it is much easier for someone to treat a woman badly than a man. We all choose a profession that is profitable for us, but when we choose journalism, we know that we have chosen a profession where it will not be easy or profitable right away. Mostly, our colleagues from the department opt ​​for some other things", she concludes.

Mina Stojković was initially interested in PR, but during her studies she became familiar with journalism as a profession important for society and realized how much influence the media has and how important it is to bring about changes: "With one published text, we can influence that someone tomorrow he has a better life or that some laws are changed. After the second year of studies, I wasn't so sure, but now in the fourth year, after an internship in the Faculty's TV newsroom and professional subjects, especially television, I see myself more and more in journalism". She feels that it is possible to change things within journalism and create, if there is none, a platform where the voice of women can be heard: "And how can we fight in terms of structural changes, the only question is whether we want it."

For her colleague Tamara Despić, in her higher years of study, and after entering the newsroom, the main question became - does she want to live such a life, with all the challenges it brings. "I'm still optimistic, I still want to do that job, but now I know how responsible and stressful it is, and to what extent we bring it home," says Tamara Despić, emphasizing that an additional problem is finding someone in the editorial office who would work with young people because they are constantly in a rush. "It is now more important for us what we will learn than how much we will earn. But I wonder what will happen when I finish college and when it's time to get a job. Only then do the existential problems start," continues Despić.

"I was shocked by the number of students from the generation who do not want to be in journalism", says Milica Blažević, estimating that perhaps only 40 to 50 people per generation want to enter the journalistic waters. Apart from gender inequality, she cites the following as reasons: "Actually, no one wants to dedicate themselves to us. I have heard from colleagues who are doing internships in another medium, on one television, and the situation is identical to mine on trial work in agency journalism. It happens that we sit for eight hours, we complete the entire shift, without anyone sitting down with us and starting from scratch, to explain to us. And so it is in most places".

As a problem, Vera Bojović points out that in some newsrooms university-educated journalists are humiliated: "The emphasis is on the fact that journalism is a craft, that it is learned, that it has nothing to do with the university". Then he adds: "People who are in editorial positions sometimes abuse the fact that they have all the possible tools in their own hands, without even being aware of how much they influence public opinion and shape it." She goes on to say that journalism is under attack from everyone, both journalism and female journalists, and that they are often faced with disgusting comments about how female journalists look, how they dress, what kind of earrings they wear, what kind of necklace they wear...

Vera Bojović concludes: "I am currently surrounded by people who plan to do this work, but the question that we often raise in formal and informal conversations is where is the middle ground in our media, where would we like to work, what is the editorial policy that we we can agree and accept it. We currently have one and the other extreme on the spectrum, we see where our media is, and where do we see ourselves? I think we will have to suspend our views and put them in our pockets, but know what the limits of dignity are. We see people crossing that border every day on television. For what? Higher wages? Journalism that deals seriously with politics, society and people in general is no longer so popular".

Disappointment on a global scale

It is not too different in the world's leading media organizations. The Reuters Institute for Journalism Studies gives a precise picture for the year 2024: in 240 of the most influential media globally, in 12 different media markets, only 24 percent of editors-in-chief are women, although in all analyzed markets more women than men are employed in the media.

At the extremes are Japan, where there is no woman in an editorial position, to the USA, where as many as 43 percent of leading journalistic positions are held by women. Representation varies by geographic area, socio-political context and political culture – Finland seems to be the best for women journalists, Mexico and Japan the worst. Germany has also seen a decline in the number of women in management positions in media companies in recent years.

Women who trained to be journalists in the US, but eventually left journalism, say they did so because they were disillusioned with the established editorial practice with which they did not necessarily agree, the excessive workload that affected their family responsibilities, lower salaries in in relation to the same jobs performed by men in the newsroom, and especially to the "male" values ​​of journalism and news editing.

The author is an associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade