Women’s Participation in Bangladeshi Online News Portals

Abstract

Along with the massive change of the digital society, the way of sending information to the public has been changing. The communication channels have digitalized and people think that the mental condition of people has changed. Theorists and academics tell that people have been modernized and their thinking also. But if we look in the sector of Online Journalism in Bangladesh, we can see that the thinking of society, family members of women has not been changed drastically. Because the participation of women in online journalism is very low in comparison to men. At the time of the survey and interview, I saw that society holds ancient thinking on women when it comes to their participation in journalism. That’s why the participation of women is very low yet. In the surveyed online portals in Bangladesh, we saw that the participation of women in online journalism reporting is 24 percent, where the participation of men is 76 percent, which is less than one fourth in comparison to a man. Their participation in the editing section is much lower. Only five percent of women are working in the editing section where 95 percent is a man. When the question came to the participation in managerial and gatekeeping positions in online journalism, the situation is even worst. Because only 11 percent of women are holding this position and 89 percent of males holding the position.