Saudi women have worked in the media since it was first established in Saudi Arabia. They wrote in the early newspapers, presented programs on the radio when it first broadcasted and appeared on television when it first aired in the late 1960s.
Through the years, women established their presence in the media but progressed little in terms of career development especially in the decision-making areas. At a recent UNDP seminar in Riyadh on the role of the media in human development, one of the workshops was on the role of the media in empowering women. The participants agreed that Saudi media have failed in empowering women but there have been efforts in the past few years to amend that. While they admitted that there has been an increased interest and focus on women’s issues in the media, the coverage generally remains limited, superficial and censored.
My view on the matter was that in order for the media to empower women by addressing their issues forcefully, raising their awareness about their rights and presenting them with solutions and alternatives, the women working in media themselves needed to be empowered.
Saudi women began writing in local newspapers before the official establishment of schools for Saudi girls in 1960. Few Saudi women who had the opportunity to receive an education abroad began writing columns under their own name as early as 1952 in the Al-Bilad newspaper. Their progress in the press continued with the encouragement and support of enlightened newspapermen and intellectuals of the time. Eventually they became full-time journalists, editors, managing editors and deputy regional managers and had their own women’s departments.
Impressive, but these women were very few and these positions hardly allowed them to have any real influence in managing the newspapers or in making editorial decisions.
The same could be said of Saudi women in radio and television. They entered radio in 1963 as editors and presenters of programs directed to women and children, and soon became managers of departments. Only last year was the first woman promoted as Jeddah’s program director. Women appeared on television in 1967 in a limited way and despite promising potential for them to grow, their role remains considerably limited. With this long history one would assume that women would be better recognized and rewarded for their achievements, but the reality for Saudi women in the media today is disappointing.
In recent years there has been some noticeable changes in the Saudi media especially in the press. It has become more critical, more open and more diverse but it is still far from being truly professional in terms of standards, ethics and organization. When it comes to women, the changes have been minimal. In 2001, the Council of Ministers approved the new system regulating the press. It included 30 items on licensing procedures, rules for board membership (which incidentally do not include women in any of the newspapers), appointing the general manager and editor in chief (again, no women except in magazines published abroad).
One of the items focused on training. It stated that a press organization should allocate a percentage of its annual profits to training and providing the necessary technological equipment for developing its performance. As many female journalists would attest to, their share, if any, of this training and equipment is less than men and they depend on their personal efforts and means to get the training and equipment they need.
The new press system also included an item on establishing a journalists association that would be independent, concerned with journalists’ affairs and rights and that would have executive bylaws to define its role. The founding committee for the Saudi Journalists Association met in 2003. It did not include women, again excluding them from discussions for establishing an association that would supposedly address the concerns of both male and female journalists. Women again were eliminated from the decision-making process and that is the core of the problem for Saudi women journalists and Saudi women in general.
Islam has guaranteed women’s right to participate in making decisions concerning her life, her money and her community and therefore she has the right to be represented in every organization and institution that affects her directly or indirectly. The nine board member positions of the Saudi Journalists Association were voted for in 2004. Women were allowed to run after some debate and two women did win, but after two years, it remains to be seen what the association has done or can do for journalists and what role women have in it.
In my master’s thesis three years ago on Saudi women in the media, I found that after all these years of working in the press, women represent less than 8 percent of the total employees in any of our country’s newspapers. There are no women in administration, production and technical fields and the majority of the women work only part-time. The highest position a woman can hope to achieve is the head of the women’s department or managing editor in the women’s department, if there is a women’s department.
In radio and television, women comprise around 5 percent of total employees. They have reached high positions within the local radio and television stations but not at the administrative and executive level in the Ministry of Information. These findings have not changed much since. In the study, three general obstacles were identified as standing in the way of women’s progress in the media. The first is the social and cultural obstacles, which include family pressure, negative perception of women working in the media, segregation in the work place and restrictions on her movements and travel. Added to that is the lack of college majors in journalism and media for girls, which puts them at a disadvantage from the start with their male colleagues. The second category of obstacles is the organizational structure of the media institutions that limits women’s career opportunities. The third group of obstacles is the discrimination between men and women in terms of salaries, media content and the way of being treated.
During the past two years, there have been some discussions through seminars, conferences and workshops by women on their status in the media and what to do about that. Ironically, these discussions received little coverage in the media. Empowering women in the media is part of empowering women in society. How can the media be expected to play its role in empowering women if it does not empower its own?
