Women representation in news production: analysis of news room diversity and decision making process in Sri Lankan press

Abstract

This paper attempts to illustrate as to how news production processes are discourses to women representation in decision making process in Sri Lankan Press. Further, this paper also compiles the evidence on how gender sensitivity culture has been mainstreamed in terms of the women representation in news production process. This paper indicates as to whether the gender sensitivity awareness exists within the organizational culture of the Sri Lankan Press. The purpose of this paper is to exclusively provide an idea about the Sri Lankan Press Media Industry in terms of gender and power relation in order to map out some research ideas and to present the exiting operational context of Sri Lankan media in relation to gender. Therefore, this paper examines specific case studies with the selected press news rooms. This will also deal with the position of women in journalism and newsroom space. On the bases of qualitative methodologies (Case study and Personal interviews), the study explores three questions: How many female journalists are participating in daily news producing process of the Sri Lankan Press? Whether mere are observable differences in the way female journalists and male journalists work in that Particular newsroom and Are the Sri Lankan Press news rooms are conventional to a traditional and patriarchal approach of journalism? In the selected news room. The results showed the participation of women journalist in decision making and news production process are influenced by gender identity and further reveled that the ownership of the particular intuition has less interest on enhancing gender stativity culture. Further, the finding reveled that the female journalist are working differently in the news production process in compared to male journalist due to several reasons. The first section of the paper scrutinizes different diverse approaches in understanding gender, while adopting media feminism as a core framework. The second section of this paper attempts to examine the specific case studies dealing with the position of women in news production decision making process and compiles some evidence that female journalist work differently within the news room space and how the gender imbalance affect on the contents of press segment Further, this section also discuses the outcomes of the results of Intensive interview in order to note the position of editors, journalist on women representation in news room. Finally, this paper notes some ideas in order to enhance the research themes and policy implications