CONNECTING BEYOND THE BYLINES FOR A GLOBAL SISTERHOOD OF WOMEN IN MEDIA

A cross-border conversation reveals shared struggles and solidarity among women journalists worldwide.

- SANDHYA MENDONCA

I've always believed that journalists are outliers. Our profession trains us to be perpetually sceptical. Who really gets us are other journalists. Which is why when I met Kathy McLeish, an Australian journalist I'd never met before, we already had this sense of camaraderie.

I was eager to meet her because she was travelling the globe to study initiatives aimed at increasing gender equality for women in the media. Bengaluru was her first stop, and when I heard about her visit through the Network of Women in Media, India, I immediately put out a message that I would like to meet her.

While Kathy was keen to know more about women journalists in India, I wanted to know about our Australian counterparts. Our mutual curiosity led to a frank conversation about the realities of being a woman in the media. We recorded it for a joint podcast which is already up on 'Spotlight With Sandhya'. Kathy intends to make her recording a part of a series at the end of her findings.

As a senior journalist and producer with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Co-Chair of Women in Media Australia, Kathy has spent years watching women "smashing away at their typewriters" while their male counterparts walk around newsrooms "talking about their very important story and their very important voice." This observation became her catalyst for change.

The first major study commissioned by Women in Media Australia, a not-for-profit initiative, titled 'Mates Over Merit', revealed what many women had long suspected: men were hiring people who looked like them, blocking women from senior roles not through deliberate malice, but through ingrained patterns of favouritism.