Balancing a life is too
hard. Getting up to get the kids run for school, sending your husband to work,
getting ready for your work, covering stories all through the day, meeting
deadlines and running back home to the kids and husband. How does a woman
journalist manage to give time to both her lives- personal and professional
life? Dishya Sharma finds out.
Date your vision
back to the early 1980’s. The morning where you would see a smiling woman
waking you up from the bed as the sun rises and her aim was to hold the family
right – both emotionally and physically – balanced. When people were told to
portray an image of a woman, all one could see her was as a mother managing a
house. Yes, the society had made people think that women are best suited for
kitchens and must be busy handling children. With a conservative environment
and women hardly thinking about a career, seeing a woman in a newsroom –
reporting about various happenings – was a far dream. She was neither not
supported by the family she was in nor by the family she was married to. This
scenario started changing after many women journalists came light and many
journalists inspired the thoughts of work balance in many aspiring journalists.
It was during
the early 1990’s when many women started having a face to their own and the
ideology of balancing work with personal life started being accepted by the society.
But the fear of handling a family always stood as a priority to women. Though
the families were opening up and husbands were becoming supportive, there was
still something holding the women. Many article during the late 1990’s and
early 2000’s described that many young women journalists were dropping out of
their careers before they could earn enough recognition because of improper
work and personal life balance. But as the decade progressed, the number of
women journalists with a long work experiences started becoming prominent. More
and more women journalists started taking their careers seriously and this,
automatically led to balancing the two worlds.
Yes, there are complaints
of missed holidays, long hours, pressure to do more yet there are more women journalist holding
on to their jobs. But women journalists are still determined about their jobs;
they still manage to find time for family in spite of tight schedules. Many journalists say that they manage to
catch up with their families during the weekly off’s they get. But are women
really getting what they deserve? There are many researches that say that
women, in spite of the women ratio increasing in the past few years, there are
still women who are seen leaving the industry at an early stage of their
career. This is mainly because many women journalists are not given enough
flexibility yet. There are many women journalists who decide to postpone their
pregnancy as they know that their career will not allow them to take the
maternity leave. There have been instances when many women journalists, post
their pregnancy, decide to leave their jobs to concentrate on the family.
There have been
researches that say that in 2000, female employees in the organised sector made
longer hours than their male colleagues: an average working week of 48.1 hours
against 46.3. Between 2000 and 2006, the average working week of females has
been shortened by 1.3 hours, whereas the male working week has been prolonged
by 0.5 hours. Poynter
Survey reveals Journalists’ Pressure Points; it shows that women, all across
the field of journalism many women journalists have not got a chance to go on a
vacation since a long time and thus that is resulting in increasing stress
levels.
Talking
about work and personal life balance is a journalist who has been in the
industry for three years now. “The truth is that I cannot give equal time to my
personal life and my professional life. The fact is that I can hardly say that
I have a personal life at all. At least, during the first few years, you have
to struggle it out; no time for yourself, your family or anything else. You
have to squeeze in time for your life, but work always comes first. This I say
with my experience in my present job.” says a feature journalist from Indian
Express in Pune. She adds that it is a tough job to balance both, personal and
professional life, but one has to learn how to make do with the imbalance. This
is probably the reason why most new journalist changes career paths in the
first two-three years.
With the support
of family and spouse, many women journalists have able to achieve balance
between work and family. “For me, it has not been a difficult time because my
husband works on similar working hours as I. But the only issue is the
weekends. I just get a day off. However, unlike many who might not have the
luck as I do in terms of timings. I guess it depends on how supportive your
family is towards your job. Work – life balance comes only when you try to
enjoy the minimum time you get at home, it’s possible” says Sneha Bhattarcharjee
Sinha who is a senior copy editor at a leading newspaper in Chennai.
The women are
facing the pressure of handling a career and managing the house, but they are
trying to balance it in some way or the other. With many families opening up to
accepting their career choice and supporting their growth, it is helping the
women to have a chance at being independent.
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