Feminism in Journalism: Only Moving Forward

The footprint of feminism never stops to move forward, media, and journalism as an essential part of the feminism movement. It only goes forward to a better place. In this essay, I will argue about the Iran women's protest and the Blocked path for Japanese women’s careers. Those two are different events that happened in different cultures, and countries of the world but basically, this is about the troubles and dilemmas women are going through right now. Revealing to the public, letting people know, making them think deeply, and finding solutions are all goals that feminist news, such as the Iran women’s protest to abolish hijabs and the Japanese women’s career troubles, are pursuing. Feminism news makes the concept of gender inequality move forward by changing people's cognition of this topic, to provoke women’s feminism ideology and make the public start think how could resolve gender equality issues.

 

“Protests Intensify in Iran Over Woman Who Died in Custody” by Cora Engelbrecht Frarnaz Fassihi, is a news article about protests in favor of abandoning the hijab rule. It is a persuasive example that this news spreads awareness of the actual situation of Iran women. This is because this news lets people think about issues of gender equity critically from ethical perspectives and reveals some social injustices and how women resist them. It gives the public and women themselves more information about this event, to know the hijab rules and how Iran women strived so hard to fight against it. “Women have also burned hijabs in protest against the law, which requires all women above the age of puberty to wear a head covering and loose clothing.” This part clarified what the protest was about, and let people know the motivation and solutions that Iran women want. What they want is just to let them walk under the sun without head coverings and loose clothing, and to have the same rights as males do in Iran. As we know, effective feminist news should list facts, interview people to get the general public's idea, and engender emotional connection between the readers and the article. This news allowed the readers to connect with the emotions of Iran women. With this event, the Iran government’s reactions were to block feminist social media like Instagram, as well as to use military force to suppress protesters. One event triggered public anger when a protester called Ms. Amini died from a heart attack, but she was healthy at the time of the arrest. And because the readers know someone died because of this, this news connects the the reader’s emotions about worries, depression, and anger to the facts.

 

According to the passage in the interview on the street, an older woman shouted at a security officer, “If you think you are a man, come and kill me.” Readers can get the sense of anger of that woman and share in her emotion. Those sentences are strong and powerful and made a striking impression on readers, which makes them think about the seriousness of this event. Also, according to the news, “One video showed a woman cutting her hair while sitting on a utility box in front of a roaring crowd.” From these, readers of this news can feel the power of those women’s spirits and the desire that they want to abolish hijabs. As Ms. Vakil said, “They might close the doors, but people will again, find a way to push open windows.” Since the public focused on this protest and human rights for Iran women, the goal of protest to abolish hijab rules will hopefully achieve at some point in the future. News is an effective medium to let journalists who are concerned about gender inequality issues concentrate and focus on this topic and spread their voices and opinions to the Iran government and to the readers. This news about Iran women is just an example. There are many other similar events back in history, where news played an important role in the movements of these events. From the History of Women’s Media, women journalists create their own media to make news about women widespread during recent decades, which makes women’s voices spread louder and further.

 

Back in history, people’s reactions toward those events were always strong. Freedom, justice, equality, and legal rights are the theme that people protest for, which is eternally immutable. In general, those topics are what protesters are pursuing and what people are caring about. News is the intermediary of spreading information that journalists want to inform the public of. This makes the step of people’s cognition of feminism move forward since they have more information and their attitude toward events like this is changed. Informing people is the first step to let readers, especially women themselves, start thinking about why they have these harsh situations, provoking their desire for equality and trying to figure out how to solve this problem. There is no possibility that women from separate places will suddenly gather to fight for one goal. News plays an important role in giving female readers the concept that they are not alone. This is the key to making feminist organization more concrete and supportive of each other, as well as creating the chance to move forward. That’s the reason why the news about Iran women’s protests is important. Feminism news like this probably wouldn’t threaten the government enough to give protesters a nice closure to make them satisfied immediately. However, it will make the rate of progress move forward since protester know they are supported by the public.

 

The Iran protester news is about giving women freedom and legal rights. The next news is an article titled “Career Women in Japan Find a Blocked Path”. Compared with the hijab rule, which is obviously a gender inequality issue and threatens women’s freedom, the career problems for women are more like latent, social rules. Which is very annoying for women’s career development and personal success, but it is very hard to find direct evidence to fight for. In many Asian workplaces, there are multiple, discriminative rules specifically for women. In this news, Martin Fackler talks about the harsh situations that Japanese women face in their workplace. “According to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. By 2005, that number had risen to only 10.1 percent, though Japan’s 27 million working women made up nearly half of its workforce.” This is data to support the core argument that for Japanese women it is very hard to get promoted. This is because of cultural reasons and how the whole of Japanese society treats women. It is similar to the Iran protest news in that both of the news has a central background reason, which is culture. News is the way to reveal and inform women about the causes of why they have difficult situations now. It is very hard to change immediately. The only way that could solve the problem is the time and the growth of the younger generation. 

 

From the interview of Ms. Kurose, a 45-year-old women worker said, “Japanese work customs make it almost impossible for women to have both a family and a career.” Having children is the cause of why women in Japan quit their jobs between 20 and 30. Beyond the society perspective, women experience many inequalities in the political side as well and are not respected and appreciated by the Japanese government. For this situation, people can reveal problems of many other Asian countries. The harsh career environment for women is not that radical as the Iran protest event, but still becomes an essential part in women’s life. The news is telling the truth about the trouble that women have. It is probably unsolvable in the next few years, but news like this could give the public, especially women, more education about why and what their situation is in these stages. It gives them a seed to make them realize problems in their inner spiritual world. As Martin Fackler wrote, companies are making some changes to make gender inequality issues decline in the workplace. It takes time but is moving forward. “Now, women’s rights advocates are starting to argue that Japan must make more such efforts — not just for the corporate good, but for survival.” It is hard to tell how many steps feminism has moved forward in recent years, but when we use a macro perspective to see how feminism has changed over decades, we realize that gender inequality issues are decreasing with time passed by, and feminism is moving straight forward and never going back. It is not a permanent topic that women need to struggle with.

 

These two news show different types of situations that women experienced, and how society and themselves react to them. one is for legal rights, and one is for personal success, and they are all moving forward through the media in different ways but for a similar goal. Feminist journalism helps generate critical thought that can correct gender inequality and help question discrimination happening around us. News about women’s rights lets the world and women themselves comprehend more about feminism and the dilemmas that women are going through. As a result, this has enhanced women’s social status by awakening people’s feminist consciousness and giving women more legal rights for pursuing gender equality. The rise of feminism organizations like Women’s Global Empowerment Fund, Happy Period, and UN Women could be evidence. Since the gender equality issues are still in the process of being resolved, people could expect more impacts that feminism in journalism will let the world change. 

 

Primary Sources：

https://cn.nytimes.com/world/20220922/iran-protests-mahsa-amini/dual/

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/asia/06equal.html?searchResultPosition=6

Secondary Source：

https://www.wifp.org/womens-media/history-of-womens-media/

https://www.humanrightscareers.com/magazine/feminist-organizations/