| News Details |
| DUJ Salutes Media Women on March 8 | | 
New Delhi,March 07 (Scoop News)- As we approach March 8, 2026, the International Women’s Day, the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) reiterates its long-standing commitment to media women. We recognize with pride the role and contribution of many women journalists to the profession, to unionisation and to society.
We also stand in solidarity with all Indian women, particularly the most marginalized and deprived among them. We stand in solidarity with working women toiling in factories, farms and offices who bear the double burden of earning and managing households and children.
A few media women are at the top of the profession today and their numbers are growing. The majority are in the middle, striving to earn their stripes in an enormously challenging profession. Women journalists now cover every field from international affairs to sports. They have also brought their own perspectives into the media with dedicated reporting and commentary on issues like healthcare, education, childcare, domestic violence and other vital social concerns. These are issues that tend to be neglected in a media dominated by hard news, politics and business.
As war clouds gather in the region, the workplace demands on media persons’ time and energy are growing, with the need to be constantly alert, always working to keep up with breaking news. DUJ demands that the deadline stress that we live under at all times and specially now must be recognized by media owners and compensated adequately. Overtime needs to be paid.
The DUJ condemns the contract system of employment in the media which makes work uncertain for many journalists, both women and men. The media sector has grown with mushrooming TV channels and digital social media but there is a lack of unionization in many of these outfits, both large and small. They were not covered under the Working Journalists Acts and instead of extending the protective umbrella of these Acts the new Labour Codes repealed them. Unionisation has been made much more difficult. This leads to growing precarity of employment in journalism. Large numbers of women and men work on the margins of journalism today. The labour of this freelance workforce is exploited by paying a pittance for their reportage and commentary, by payment for bits and bytes.
Women journalists tend to be retrenched first under the belief that men are primary earners and need the jobs more. Many women are fired when they get pregnant as managements do not want to pay maternity wages and benefits. Media women also suffer sexual harassment at work, in many cases silently. Only a few dare to speak up. The lack of unionization and poor HR policies make such exploitation possible.
Trolling on social media has become a constant hazard for women journalists including threats of violence, rape and death. Muslim women in the media are particular targets of the Hindutva brigade. DUJ demands that employers counter such threats and actively provide legal help for women employees who are trolled for their work.
On this International Women’s Day the DUJ calls for the enforcement of paid maternity leave and strict penalties for sexual harassment at the workplace. We demand that employers provide safe transport for night shift workers, both women and men. We also demand rollback of the Labour Codes, fair wages for all journalists, proper and timely payment for freelance work, decent pensions and social security.
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