Women proliferate in the world of the media today in India. You see them on all television news channels, covering everything from politics, to business, to sport, to entertainment. They are anchors. They are investigative reporters. They cover wars and conflict. They interview politicians, performers and big businessmen. There is little that is out of reach for a woman journalist today, even if she has to still work harder to prove that she is capable of reporting on any subject as well as the next man.
Yet, in the typewriter age, when the process of newsgathering and delivery was necessarily slower and more laborious, women were incidental to the business of the media. The media then was mostly print; there was no television; and radio consisted of All India Radio, owned and operated by the Government of India.
One of the first women to enter the world of journalism post-Independence India was Kamla Mankekar. In her autobiography, she describes what this meant. Some of it is not news to the generation after her but, for the present generation, it would seem almost improbable. Many women journalists, including this writer, have experienced what Kamla Mankekar did in one of her first jobs: the absence of a toilet for women! In her case, because she was the only woman in the entire organisation, not just in the newsroom.
Also like many in the generation after her, she was first assigned to the desk. When she ventured to suggest that she could report and write, she was asked to cover social and cultural events, considered suitable for women. Politics, sports, business were clearly in the male domain. There would have been no discussion on that.
Also familiar to many women journalists from an earlier era, Kamla Mankekar recounts, without the slightest embarrassment, how she had to use contacts with the proprietors of the publications with which she worked to get the assignments she wanted. It is evident that she was not willing to sit back and wait for that to happen and took a pro-active position. Of course, such an attitude would have been termed “aggressive” because it was a woman involved. The same strategy by a male journalist would have been thought of as being enterprising. In Mankekar’s case, the strategy worked and she ultimately moved to reporting in the news bureau.
Sexual harassment at the workplace in media houses is still not fully acknowledged. Many media houses have taken their own time to set up committees to look at such cases even though the Supreme Court had mandated this many years back. Women too hesitate to report cases of harassment because they believe it would work against their ability to remain in employment or to seek employment elsewhere. As a result, much of what goes on in newsrooms even today remains unspoken and unreported. But daily harassment, in the form of personal or off-colour remarks, to actual propositioning is something that many women journalists have learned to accept as an occupational hazard. So it comes as no surprise that, even in the calmer age in which Kamla Mankekar entered journalism, a single woman in a world of men could not escape this. Although she states that she did not experience any gender discrimination, the author recounts several incidents where she was propositioned and made to feel uncomfortable.
Mankekar’s book goes beyond her experiences as a journalist to the time when, like many journalist even today, she moved out of the newsroom into the world of public relations. She also worked with the Delhi State Commission for Women and the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) and did a spell on the film censor board.
Mankekar lived through the changes India saw post -Independence, through the Emergency to the defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977 and her resurrection in 1980. Politically these were fascinating times. And, as a journalist based in Delhi for a large part of her career, the author had a ringside view of political developments that she recounts in the book.
But the most interesting parts remain her personal experiences as a journalist in leading newspapers, the atmosphere that prevailed in the newsroom, the difficulties that a woman faced not just in an all-male environment in the newsroom but even when dealing with the workers in the printing press who were not used to a female presence. This makes engaging reading and is an important record of media history.
Breaking News: A Woman in a Man’s World;Kamla Mankekar, Rupa, Rs.395
