Media role for women's empowerment in Southern Punjab (Multan City) Pakistan

Pakistan is a developing country with huge population, men and women are almost equalin numbers. Gender discrimination and violence against women is common practice in society.The study has been conducted in one of the city of Punjab province, Multan district (Pakistan).The population of the study area contains on the basis of different social classes. Media industryis flourishing rapidly in Pakistan and every social class has access on it. The first objective of thestudy was to analyze the people’s perception of different social classes about womenempowerment, socio-cultural and religious impacts on women empowerment in the study area.The second objective was to analyze the media policies and media role for womenempowerment. Electronic media like TV channels can educate the women about their rightsbecause due to low literacy rate majority of the population cannot read or write.In present study, to analyze the research objectives different methods were used for datacollection such as household interviews, key informants interviews, group discussions andparticipant observation. In focused area verbal communication and interview method was thebest way for the collection of information because most of the rural population was uneducatedand they cannot read the questionnaire. For the collection of information from the educatedpeople questionnaire survey method was also used.The main focus was to know the views of different people about women empowermentand to analyze the media role for women issues. In the study area, it was found that womenbelongs to upper class families are more empowered and their status is much better than middleclass and lower class families. Men belong to upper class and middle class families were in favorthat women should be empowered. Worst condition of women was in Wadera class families andlower class families because women status in these families was just like a slave. Educated malerespondents were agreed that media can play a positive and constructive role for the bettermentof women status but contribution of TV channels is not satisfactory in this regard. Only educatedwomen gave the response in favor of TV channels that TV channels are highlighting the womenproblems and they are getting some information from TV channels. Mostly respondents fromurban areas did not have any idea about the importance of TV channels and TV was the onlysource of entertainment for them.Although many people from the study area were agreed that women should beempowered in a society. Women empowerment is also necessary for the development of acountry. Most of the women were victimized by men in rural areas and the main reason was lessliteracy rate in those areas. Media could play a key role for the betterment of women and TVchannels should focus women issues in different programs