Profession of Journalist: Women in the male world of nineteeth century press.

Abstract

To be a writer, and more specifically to be a journalist, was mainly a male activity in the 19th centuty. This article aims to analyze the processes and strategies that women experienced and use to access the professionalization of writing through the press. Journalism was a profession in construction at the time, that was generally considered a secondary activity that lead to success or political relations, but it evolved to become a profession like any other. For the female writers, it meant achieving economic and social autonomy and recognition, in a context where they found few opportunities. They had to stablish a negotiation between their real possibilities and the transgression of social norms. In adition, their starting point was a situation of inequality in educational aspects and a theoretical separation in different spheres that atributed mainly to middle-class women the domestic and private field and so excluded them from the public one and the professional paid work. This separation had its correlate in the topics and types of publications that were allowed to women writers and they will be able to expand and enrich those contents and spaces, as it would be shown. We will study the use of pseudonyms, the creation of alternative spaces and opportunities for socialize, find mutual support and grow professional practice. The role played by the «women’s» magazines and the progressive introduction of women in mainstream press will be also analysed, as well as the feminist activism and its publications. The approach to the question is aimed to be transnational and comparing Spain to France and the United Kingdom to face the complexity of the processes, eliminate possible biases and take into account thev differences of each specific context.