While walking through the snow on the campus of our university in Sibiu, Romania, Mariya says with a gentle smile that she strongly believes that her studies in journalism will get her an exciting job as a reporter for one of the country’s many magazines.

With over 2,000 print publications, more than 70 newspapers and upwards of 300 radio stations, there is a huge demand for journalists in Romania, and if you look around the journalism department at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBUS), where I recently received an undergraduate degree in journalism, you can’t help but notice that the majority of students are woman.

Gabriel Hasmatuchi, an investigative reporting professor at LBUS, says that females have always made up the majority of his classes. He said the fact that 90 percent of his 50 students are female is largely due to the pressure put on men to work rather than study. Of the 163 students studying journalism at LBUS, 130 are female.

Lana Ungureanu, a 21-year-old senior in journalism at LUBS, said that young women are attracted to journalism because they see promising career prospects with good pay, but also said that women are more well-suited for the job. “I think it is easier for girls to contact and communicate with sources,” she said.

“I like meeting and talking with people and at the same time, through my articles, I can educate and entertain my people. It is a small contribution from me in helping the development of my country.”

Not surprisingly, the dominance of woman at university journalism departments extends into the professional world as well. “Journalism is a vast domain, very captivating and full of surprises,” says Alina Cristina C?mpeanu, 23, a reporter for the Monitorul de Sibiu Newspaper, “It’s appropriate that women work in this domain.”

“There are six reporters in my newspaper and four of them are women,” said Via. “They are hard working and very successful in their work. I appreciate what they have done.”

Seeing so many women working in the media was an important factor in Oana Tima’s decision to study journalism, and now the 24-year-old is an editor for the Libertatea Daily, one of most famous newspapers in Romania. “Women can develop journalism skills very fast and they do it well,” she said, adding that the high number of female journalists in not due to Romanian culture but is a recent trend.

“In the past 20 years, Romanian women have begun to think that they can do every job better than men,” said Hasmatuchi.