Women and Journalism

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Early women journalists: 1850–1945

As with most paid occupations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, journalism was male-dominated and hierarchical. Editors and publishers regarded women as consumers rather than as producers of news. Only when advertising became necessary to newspapers’ survival in the last decades of the nineteenth century were women actively sought as journalists to produce articles that would directly appeal to women readers and around which lucrative advertisements targeting women consumers could be placed. That is, women were hired as ‘women journalists’ to attract female audiences. While most male editors assumed that women lacked reporting skills and could never acquire them, those who did employ ...