Contribution of women in local media

At my second blog entry, I shown that female models are dominating fashion modelling industry as they have several of clothing choices thus they have more expression towards fashion compared to male models. Not to doubt that female fashion magazines are mostly show cases of female models, nevertheless is it these magazines really contributed by most of the women? Let us just take a magazine called “GLAM” as example of Malaysia contributed in editing.  

“GLAM” is a female fashion magazine that targeted women between age 20 and 40, and mostly are focused on audiences that affordable try new products and labels. Nevertheless when you read through the credits page, you can find many male contributors in the field of photographing, editing and produce. 

Photo shot of GLAM magazine cover and its contributors page. By the language (Bahasa Melayu) itself on the cover you can already tell it is from Malaysia, and this evidence shows minimal contribution of women in magazine industry in Malaysia

These are the 3 sections that I captured from the contributors page of GLAM. We can see the names are majotiry of male contributor names shown on GLAM magazine.

 We can see that the workforce and contribution of women in media are minimal at least in Malaysia. According to Dr Azman’s (2005) evidence, Malaysian women in general participate well in the local media industries but their participation at the decision-making levels is minimal. The number of women employed in the media industries in the 1970s rarely exceeded 30 percent of the total work force and this situation has not changed significantly in the 80s and 90s.

This kind of phenomenon is not just happened to magazines industry. Weak and dependent on man images of women often can be seen on local news reporting. Female news reporters are almost invisible or subordinate with man (Azman, A.A 2005). Their role playing seems don’t have much of decision making opportunities in term of media industry.

Stereotyped image of women often associated with consumers of fashion and beauty products and the media is interested with the role of women playing as consumers. 

Bibliography

Azman, A. A. (2005) ‘Cultivating Gender Sensitive Culture in the Malaysian Media Industry: A Critique and an Alternative’. Universiti Sains Malaysia. [online] http://eprints.usm.my/4896/1/Cultivating_Gender_Sensitive_Culture_In_The_Malaysian_Media_Industry.pdf[Accessed 25 June2015]

Omsqatar (2014). GLAM. [online] http://www.omsqatar.com/glam.html [Accessed 25 June 2015]