Women will hold up half the sky in the world of Chinese journalism in the near future, according to official statistics.

 

In journalism schools across the country, female students have outnumbered male students in recent years, and over 70,000 women journalists are registered at the State Press and Publication Administration, nearly 40 percent of the total 180,000.

 

The administration released the figures on November 7, one day before China's Journalist's Day.

 

"The percentage is higher than a decade ago, when our survey together with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed women journalists accounted for only one third of the total," said Sun Zhengyi, deputy director of the All-China Journalists' Association domestic department.

 

According to Luo Jianhui, office head of Renmin University of China's School of Journalism and Communication, female students accounted for 65 percent of enrolled journalism undergraduates this year.

 

Luo said this trend has been occurring for a number of years now "There was a year when there were only 20 male students among the total 120-odd journalism majors," he said.

 

The same phenomenon can be seen at Peking and Tsinghua universities, sources say.

 

Cheng Mei, professor at Renmin University's Journalism School, said that more young women have realized that journalism is an attractive option.

 

Nowadays young women have realized the importance of information as well as the advantages they have as journalists, such as the "ability to find newsworthy things from complicated social symptoms," she said.

 

Sun believed that women journalists are better at dealing with public relations than men.

 

An increasing number of men are now choosing business over journalism, he said. In China, men account for 80 percent of the total number of entrepreneurs.

 

"With such a trend there is no question that in future, journalism will see a 50-50 gender ratio," he estimated.

 

China's journalists are also getting younger, according to the administration's statistics.

 

At present, journalists under the age of 40 account for 61 percent of the total. Among them, over 40,000 are between 20 and 30 years old, and 73,000 are between 30 and 40.

 

China's news business is expanding rapidly with the number of newspapers rising from 200 to 1,900 since the late 1970s.

 

"Competition in the news business is more intense than ever before," said Cheng. "Newspapers 20 years ago had only a few pages each day, and I knew a journalist who wrote only a few reports each month. There was no target for journalists then," said Sun.

 

(China Daily December 1, 2006)