In her picturesque inner-north backyard, complete with cubby house, chook shed and well-laid-out vegie plots, ABC reporter Emma Griffiths is a world away from the madness of a bloodthirsty separatist movement slaughtering innocents during a particularly abhorrent chapter of turbulent Russian politics.

But 10 years ago, as a 30-year-old female reporter just a few months into her first overseas posting, she was in the firing line. Literally.

Griffiths began her career with the ABC more than 17 years ago. She aspired to an overseas posting and was obsessed with Russia.

Her dedication to poring over old editions of The Economist while fitting in late-night language classes combined well with her news-gathering prowess and two years of experience covering federal politics in the press gallery. She won the coveted gig.

Following in the footsteps of celebrated former colleagues and Russian correspondents Monica Attard and Linda Mottram, Griffiths felt enormous pressure to achieve, which may help explain how she came to do a live cross to Juanita Phillips during the 7pm bulletin in the midst of the 2004 massacre within heart-stopping proximity to sniper fire.

Griffiths was one of the first Western journalists on the scene at School Number One in the North Ossetia town of Beslan.

The footage, in which she breaks her live interview with a hurried look to her right before declaring "We have to move, I'm sorry Juanita" and dashes for cover against the crack of bullets, made not only for dramatic coverage but earned Griffiths a Walkley Award commendation.

"I just remember being so focused on what I was doing, which was a live cross, I was just locked into this space and it wasn't until [ABC London correspondent] Phillip Williams came right up to the camera and said you have to move right now, that I paid attention to the sounds of the explosions and gunfire around me, which, at that time, was killing hundreds of people."

While another colleague, Sally Sara, has recently opened up about her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder as a personal consequence of her extraordinary and courageous reporting from Afghanistan, Griffiths is inordinately grateful that her time in Beslan has left no lasting mental scars.

This is despite witnessing unimaginable scenes of dead and dying children, interviewing dozens of distraught parents, and following the shell-shocked town in the ensuing years.

"Beslan was definitely the point at which I truly grew up, and the point I realised the world can be an unfriendly place. And I do feel a bit shaky and feel my heart rate rise when I think back to that day and that interview in particular, but I didn't suffer the sorts of long-lasting effects that I know can happen to some journalists in the field … and for that I am really grateful."

Reporting these days is an infinitely more sedate affair.

Griffiths admits that returning to Australia was sobering after four years of covering everything from the London bombings to the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the death of Pope John Paul II – and, along the way, picking up a UN Media Peace Award for her Foreign Correspondent report on the Romanian children still recovering from the Ceausescu regime.

One week she was trekking to record the unique sounds of a Siberian throat singer high in a mountain-top yurt, and the next she was sitting in the bear-pit of NSW Parliament chronicling the unedifying final days of Morris Iemma's government, which, at a particular low point featured one minister being sacked for allegedly dancing in his undies before simulating a sex act on another MP.

"It was, yes, a huge adjustment."

So it was with much relief that she accepted another posting to the press gallery where she is now the ABC's online political correspondent.

Federal politics, she says, is exhilarating in its own right and every leadership challenge and election campaign brings its own hit of adrenalin.

Griffith's biggest challenge these days is combining all that she needs to achieve in her professional sphere with the upbringing of her two children – Sylvie, 4 and Lewis, 2, to partner and ABC chief of staff Simon Johnson.

And as another press gallery export, Annabel Crabb, questions the almighty juggle of working women in her latest book The Wife Drought, Griffiths, too, wishes to highlight the additional challenges women face upon entering the field of journalism.

"It's an amazing profession to be part of, but I think female journalists face different challenges at different times in their careers to their male counterparts and I think we need to do more to address these."

These challenges range from sexual harassment, the gender divide in promotion and story assignment that regularly has female journalists given the lighter rounds or "puff" pieces to cover, entrenched wage disparity, a lack of females in senior and managerial positions, a lack of mentors for younger women coming up through the pack, the difficulties of combining a fast-paced and deadline-driven career if a woman has children, and the dearth of structured support bodies.

For her part, Griffiths is squeezing yet more hours of juggling and productivity into her day by convening the Women in Media Canberra group – a nationally unfolding organisation backed by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which hopes to bolster the collective professional might of females in the media industry.

Though it is billed as a networking and support organisation, Griffiths wants the Canberra group to fulfil a more agenda-setting role.

Comprising some of the country's most senior media talent, including The Guardian's political editor Lenore Taylor, SBS chief political correspondent Karen Middleton, The Australian's senior writer Stefanie Balogh, and The Saturday Paper's chief political correspondent Sophie Morris, Women in Media hopes to make inroads into broadening the way women are portrayed within the media.

This means asking questions about whether women are excluded from coverage if, for example, it relates to expertise or experience with a given subject area, or whether they are targeted for coverage in a sexist manner, particularly in the microcosm of Federal Parliament.

"For us it is about providing leadership and mentoring of women coming up through the ranks, of providing a female perspective on the national discourse, of being able to connect women in politics and in the industry in a way that current networking doesn't allow."

Griffithssays with a laugh that the men on the hill need not quake in their boots that some sort of anti-male rebellion is happening within newsrooms across the country.

"Honestly, it is not about them, it's about us, talking to each other, sharing with each other and supporting each other. We don't want to exclude men from what we are thinking and doing, we actually want to bring them along with us."

Women in Media will be launched on Wednesday, October 29, at the National Press Club. Emma Macdonald is a Canberra Times reporter and mother of two who is, in her spare time, a member of the Women in Media Organising Committee.