// Persuasive writing

The fact that women are victims of sexual abuse, groping, molestation, especially at times of wars or conflicts are because of the image that the society has created upon women and other new emerging forms of violence.

Women have dominated the world of journalism with great charisma and splendour and helped bring forward the most varied and multifarious problems in the limelight and for the world to see. The have won some of the most prestigious accolades and awards for their excellence in journalism, but grievously some of these have been posthumous.

Sometimes I feel that the reason for not sending a woman journalist to a war zone or a conflict affected zone is because the safety of the woman journalist becomes the responsibility of the corporate body. It is not the mistake of the woman journalist to be born female, she should rather be well briefed about the situation, the cause of it and its consequences and then be given the choice to go or not.

This problem is not just a thing of the present, such instances can be traced far back to the 90’s says Milligan who hails from Budapest. She shares her experiences of Kosovo, where the militants thought that they were soldiers but then how having two men and two women in the group changed the dynamics of their situation and saved their lives.

But commentators like Nir Rosen and Debbie Schlussel blame reporters like Lara Logan to be at fault stating that the fact she is pretty; decided to go into the crowd; because she is a war junkie and absurd reasons like these for the sexual harassment she encountered. But this had nothing to do with Islam, sexual violence has always been a tool of war and Lara Logan being a female was just a convenient .

Surveys conducted by the UNESCO show that more than 40% of the media professionals around the world are female (in the Scandinavian countries they are more than 50%), while in many countries in transition the proportion is even higher, for example in Russia, Latvia, Bulgaria & Armenia they make up to 70 – 80%, and the absolute majority of all journalism students are female.

When facts so strong like these are laid on the table it becomes practically impossible to stop women from going to war inflicted areas. According to Badkhen who covers wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine territories, Kashmir and many more locations, the risk associated with being a war correspondent isn’t limited to women. "I categorically do not believe that women war correspondents are more vulnerable than war correspondents who are men," Badkhen says.

But the solution does not lie in holding women back and not letting them go into hostile environments, but in giving them training in self defence and specialized war training, explaining them the credibility, making them study the roots of the conflict and also the cultural and social sensitivities of the area. This may not be a fix to this problem but it at least gives a start.

Acknowledgments & Citations

Rethinking Media in Conflict Zones:Hamed Elmi:  http://goo.gl/ZI4f

Why we need women in warzones:Kim Barker: http://goo.gl/uRcvH

Intense training prepares journaliats for war:Charlotte Sector: http://goo.gl/0buzf

Yahoo Work + Money: Lylah Alphonse: http://goo.gl/CdPWk

Building bridges across conflicts:Nadezda Azhgikhina: http://goo.gl/BaZpk