When Working for Media is Hard; and Being a Woman Makes It Harder to Survive

 A women's month feature.  An essay by a woman for the woman who aspires for better opportunities back home.

The truth of middle-age displaced women in media

Where survival for the fittest also requires survival of the meanest.

I still remember to this day how a respectable senator was downed with disrespect in words in front of the camera, me watching on television and how uncaring it was spoken to a woman of value.

Every word spoken by the leader of the land pained, like dagger of hurts in my heart, as a fence sitter clueless of the brazenness of a man.

That's a flashback of memory which I earnestly wait stays unrepeated.

For a freelance media writer towing the line of hope, none, hope, where opportunities are none even as a simple woman, there can be no turning back for an adult who has been fraught with job opportunities and more in her very own home.

Old and weary, a middle age woman goes back and forth looking for fate, where it lies, whether the industry she once belonged to has dejected her.

There is a compounding evidence, she has come to hold in paper and in truth that being in media or at least working for it, is a terrible mistake only if one wants to see the light of day, with full of glad tidings for a better future.

There is no job available for women who used to pound and toil on the desk writing all sorts of things from features to business articles.

There is no joy in waiting for response for resumes that have come by the hundreds while others laugh at her having no job at all in her age and with someone to feed by the wayfare of life and love.

Truth and all some women chose to bare their limb, legs showing and flaunting on an IG (Instagram) post  just for a "like" or additional followers that can get her into the radar of advertisers looking for women influencers.

But an old woman writer would rather not be dumbfounded by such and stay true to the dusk that a talent is a talent, and showing off what one has, or hold, are not part of the good jobs that await women.

It has come to this.

After giving birth and growing old, returning to work is no longer a viable option for even capable working professional women, as younger workers are favoured and fresh faced beauties with no recollect of how unfair an employer can be in media, are placed in better light than the older women.

In the nineties, era of Spice Girls and women empowerment, women were always given fairer chances and the middle aged women helmed the management of many companies and industries.

Now, looking and seeking employment seems to be easiest only with a miracle by your side, perhaps thru work of clout or a stout heart to make a woman feel proud to be with a man who can give her work.

But this is not happening for women in media who have been displaced for a good decade of irresponsible management and none empathic ways of thinking about the future of it's writers.

Women have to settle all the time in a country where there are many domesticated women who hunger for equality; I suppose  there is a bleak timeline that must be survived and this comes after birthing.

But where to after a woman becomes a dull grown woman?

Maybe out in the streets to belong. Find a job selling clothes like the unsettled.

Or wait for a better leader who can make the future better, for a woman.

Maybe not with gifted logos and flaunted ghostly investors who haunt only for the men who need jobs for their families left behind.

But also for the middle aged women who are smart enough to know that they have been short changed the most and treated lacklusterly in their own very home.

News Review Philippines. 2024.

Edited.