Attack on female journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of threats to Media Freedom

Attack on female journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of threats to Media Freedom

Zlatiborka Popov- Momčinović, professor of political sciences and head of the Department of Journalism and Political Sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of East Sarajevo.

The bad position of journalists is often connected with the concept of a so called feminization of certain professions. Namely, the increasing number of women entering the particular profession is followed by negative phenomena such as job insecurity, the decline of “reputation” of a certain profession, reduced wages and other benefits, which points out at the existence of misogynist social environment where gender equality is an exception rather than a rule. On the other hand, women occupy only 30% of the management jobs in the BiH media2. This does not mean that female journalists are therefore necessarily more vulnerable and are more exposed to attacks and other forms of pressure and freedom threats. But certainly they are less empowered to report such cases. Therefore the existing reports handling such complaints are supposed to be incomplete and also not gender-disaggregated as well.