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42 Women in the Economy (MWG-011)
Within this section of labor force, women only hold lower status positions, receive lesser salaries and
are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed compared to their male counterparts. Many of
these differences persist when qualifications of men and women scientists are taken into account.
Despite initiatives on the part of the industry to recruit and retain women, women scientists are less
likely than male scientists to be employed in the industrial sector of the market.
Mass Media and Communication: Despite the long and impressive history of employment in
communication in India, it has led to only a few openings for women. Journalism, particularly
newspaper journalism, has been predominantly a male profession but radio, television and advertising
have provided more scope for educated women. Lately, in public relations, film documentaries (a form
of film journalism) and marketing and distributive agencies, women have made an entry either as full-
time or part-time professional workers.
Careers in communication are concentrated in the urban centers and in fact, mainly in the bigger
metropolitan centers. Most leading newspapers have a women’s or children’s page and these are
usually edited and produced by women members of staff. Contributions to the women’s page are
almost exclusively by women.
Radio and television offer better facilities for women professionals. From inception, women have been
recruited to posts of announcers, newsreaders, feature or documentary producers and even engineers.
There are segments of the daily radio station schedule which are exclusively the domains of women.
Every station has a Women’s and Children’s hour besides programmes designed for specific audiences
like rural women and families of workers.
There are a number of women in Radio programming cadres and in the category of casual artists,
which includes script-writers, feature-writers, newsreaders and participants in plays and
documentaries. In addition, there is some scope for women freelancers who wish to contribute to
Radio’s programmes. There are women who have specialized in interviewing and discussion
techniques and are popular anchors on private T.V and radio channels.
Television offers the largest and most varied opportunities to educated women. The great majority of
newsreaders, announcers, programmed producers, comperes and artistes are women.
Advertising: In advertising, women have begun to make some headway. For certain specialized
areas of this profession, they are favoured over men. In creative advertising media, for copy-writing
and designing, women are indeed preferred. More energetic and dynamic personalities among women
have graduated to executive positions. Intelligent and agreeable women and girls are an asset in
surveys involving complicated questionnaires. Respondents are known to be more forthcoming and
cooperative with women interviewers. Commercial radio, which is being rapidly extended to all parts
of the country, also provides opportunities for women employees.

Q5. Explain urbanization, its trends and issues.
Ans. Urbanization refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the decrease in the
proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is
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predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people
begin living and working in central areas.
Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of
human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by
predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation
of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common
bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior, whereas urban culture is characterized by
distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior.
Urbanization, in the demographic sense, is an increase in the proportion of the urban population (U)
to the total population (T) over a period of time. As long as U/T increases there is urbanization.
However, theoretically it is possible that this proportion remains constant over time in a situation
where there is absolutely no rural to urban migration and both the rural and urban populations grow
at the same rate. In such a case, there will be urban growth without urbanization.
Thus, the process of urbanization is a continuing process which is not merely a concomitant of
industrialization but an affiliate of the whole gamut of factors underlying the process of economic
growth and social transformation.
Undoubtedly, town-planning is important but preparation of master plans for cities becomes an
exercise in futility unless the economics of urbanization is considered and the cost of the urban
infrastructure is taken into account. In short, urbanization must be viewed as an aspect of economic
growth. Another consequence of the housing approach is seeking of solutions based on discouraging
migration to cities, disregarding the fact that lack of housing can scare an insignificant middle-class
but not the bulk of migrants from rural to urban areas.