Hi! I’m a 45-year-old woman with a high school education, a job that requires a lot of work, and a husband who doesn’t like to take care of his own personal finances.
I’ve been working as a journalist for the past 8 years in three different countries. I’m a mother of two, have had several surgeries, and am currently on blood thinners to fight a blood clot or two. I’ve also got a part-time job as a journalist, and am currently working on a new article. I also have a great-aunt who is a professional photographer.
I was very surprised to learn that, since the late 1990s, many women in Japan have been doing their own news reporting and still are. This may be because of the high cost of news programming for women in Japan, but it also seems to be because the Japanese don’t like to admit that they don’t understand news.
I’m really surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion about how the Japanese media has changed over the past 25 years. In the late 1990s, there was no internet. Today there is and the Japanese media is still very different from how it was back in the early 90s.
The news media in Japan is very different from what it was in the late 1990s. Back then you could rely on TV, radio, and newspapers. It was the only way to get news. Now there is no such thing as a public TV news network, except for those who have their own networks. We are talking about all the TV channels in Japan. The networks include NHK, Fuji TV, and Tokyo TV.
Like other countries, in Japan, women in the news media have been losing their jobs in the last decade and a half. In fact, the last few years have been the worst ever for female reporters. This is not a good thing. The good news is that many new male reporters are joining the field. The bad news is that women who have been in the news media for a while are being less and less likely to rejoin the field as well.
This is, in part, due to increased competition from TV drama and games shows. The last couple of years have seen a spike in the number of shows starring a female protagonist. So, in this context, this is a good thing.
It’s not just that the number of female comedians and game show hosts is increasing. In 2012 the number was already at 10% higher than in 2007. It’s that the news media is less and less likely to hire women to replace old news anchors who are retiring or getting killed off. It makes sense, we don’t want to lose the ones we have, but it’s not like it makes us any less likely to hire a woman to replace us.
The thing is, you’re probably not sure if your former news anchor has ever considered a career in comedy, and that’s okay. I’ve seen the news media go after women for being “too aggressive and pushy.” But here’s the thing: the most pushy news anchors are not the ones who are old. The ones who are the least pushy are the ones who are the most pushy.
Maybe its time we gave female anchors a break. We do need to hire more women, but we also need to stop acting like they have to be so pushy. The fact is we are so pushy when we are in a position of power that it is not a good look. We need to be able to say, “I can take it,” and not have anyone take it from us.
