Women in Media as Rj (A Sociological Study in The Role of Women Rj in Fm Stations of Pokhara Valley)

Abstract

The study entitled “ Women in Media as RJ” in Pokhara Valley has aimed to study the increasing participation of women in media. It aims to study the roles, responsibilities and challenges of women in media as RJ. On the other hand employment promotes capacity, feeling, confidence and standard of life of the women. In fact for overall development of the society and the country, it is essential to promote the role of the women in every social and economic activities of the country equivalent to the male counterparts. It focuses that in the modern world of so called 21st century, the employed women are also suffering from discrimination in terms of getting responsibility and authority in their workplace. Likewise there is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area, equal pay for equal work, protection for working women, fairness in career advancement, equality of spouces with regard to family rights, and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state. The advancement of women’s genuine emancipation is a matter of justice which can no longer be overlooked. In every area, “a greater presence of women in society will prove most valuable, for it will help to manifest the contradiction present when society is organized according to the criteria of efficiency and productivity and it will force systems to be redesigned in a way which favours the processes of humanization which mark the civilization of love. The great development in the field of information, technology and communication channels have an important role to turn the viii old stone age into the current dynamic modern age. The power of communication channel has really made this world a narrow place. The major objectives of the study were to draw the roles and responsibilities of women RJs in the society, to observe the challenges and problems faced by the women RJ and to study the factors that encourages the women RJ to go ahead for job. The study has been carried out selecting 78 women RJ as respondents from the 13 F.M. stations of Pokhara valley of Kaski district. Both the explorative and descriptive research design were used in this research. The researcher has employed various data collection techniques and tools such as interview schedule method, observation, survey method and data analysis and presentation for the collection of primary data. Secondary data and information were extracted from the different published and unpublished sources such as journals, books, articles, internet, etc as per the requirement to the research. The result has been descriptively analyzed for which frequency distribution and percentage has been used. The station managers, programme co-ordinator and directors of media institutions were taken as key informants of the research. The research shows that major ethnic groups of the study come from Gurung, Magar and Newar. In religion wise largest number of the respondents are Hindus (82.1%). Among them 41 percent of respondents have passed Bachelor’s Degree and almost all women RJ have passed SLC. Many of them are of age group of 18 to 25 years and are collage students. They take RJ as a hobby but not as a profession. Though there are women who are working hard ix to get parity with male co-officials and to be a successful RJ in media field. Many of them are holding side jobs as the salary is very low with compare to other profession. But the Station Managers are not ready to accept the fact of having low salary for the RJ, it depend upon the RJ’s dedication, their talent towards the subject matter and how much time they give to this job. Though the majority women RJ (65.4%) have an opinion of salary insufficiency to meet the basic needs. Very less women are found who hold the member of an executive body in the FM stations. Similarly there were women (82%) who have very less decision making power in the work place. Thus, women are attracted to join the media as RJ, which has a positive impact on the family and the society. They get an utter respect by the audience and become a public figure whom the society has an absolute trust. Media is said to be the 4th pillar of the country which deals with good governance, awareness programmes to the local areas of the country, it brings out the problems and solutions of the people of grassroot level. It generates the societal, political, cultural, national and international issues to the people. From the above findings it become apparent that the situation of women in media as RJ is not so bad. The only thing required is women’s hard work to become a successful RJ. They should take several trainings, be educated,be positive, be dynamic and should give her full time to the job.