Women in journalism
Women in journalism[] are individuals who participate in journalism. As journalism became a profession, women were restricted by custom from access to journalism occupations, and faced significant discrimination within the profession. Nevertheless, women operated as editors, reporters, sports analysts and journalists even before the 1890s in some countries as far back as the 18th century.
Currently
In 2017, with the #MeToo movement, a number of notable female journalists came forward to report sexual harassment in their workplaces.In 2018, a global support organization called The Coalition For Women In Journalism was formed to address the challenges women journalists face across different countries in the world. According to its founder, a Pakistani journalist Kiran Nazish, "Traditionally, women journalists have been doing it alone and they do need an infrastructure that helps guide them through their careers." She said in an interview, "The reason why women are not on the top is not because there aren't enough women or that they're not talented enough, it's purely that they need to help each other. That's why we were formed and that's why we would like to get as much support in from everyone in the industry."
According to Lauren Wolfe, an investigative journalist and the director of the Women's Media Center's Women Under Siege program, female journalists face particular risks over their male colleagues, and are more likely to experience online harassment or sexual assault on the job.
According to a report released on 20 December 2017 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, in 2017, 42 journalists were killed because of their work worldwide, with 81 percent of those journalists male. This was slightly lower than the historical average of 93 percent of men journalists killed annually for their work, with The Intercept theorizing that the drop was perhaps due to women being assigned more frequently to dangerous locales.
Until 2019, the problem of gender imbalance and lack of representation of women on platforms of success continued. After the British Journalism Awards 2019, the fewer bylines by women visible in the award caused a stir leading to a protest and a relaunch of Words By Women Awards.
Safety
Safety of journalists is the ability for journalists and media professionals to receive, produce and share information without facing physical or moral threats. Women journalists also face increasing dangers such as sexual assault, "whether in the form of a targeted sexual violation, often in reprisal for their work; mob-related sexual violence aimed against journalists covering public events; or the sexual abuse of journalists in detention or captivity. Many of these crimes are not reported as a result of powerful cultural and professional stigmas."Threats
Online harassment
By country
Canada
published the newspaper The Patriot in Toronto in 1840–1848, followed in 1851 by Mary Herbert, who became the first woman publisher in Nova Scotia when publishing the Mayflower, or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper.Three Canadian woman journalists who worked near the end of the nineteenth century for newspapers which would evolve into the Globe and Mail were Kit Coleman, Faith Fenton and Sara Jeannette Duncan.
Canadian-born Florence MacLeod Harper was notable for her work with photographer Donald Thompson covering both the Eastern front in World War One and the February revolution in St Petersburg 1917 for Leslie's Weekly. Her subsequent books, Bloodstained Russia and Runaway Russia, were among the first Western accounts of events.
The Netherlands
Henriette Holst-Hendrix, the first woman journalist of Holland, was known both in the U.S. and abroad for her lectures on Dutch and Japanese customs. Soon after completing college in Holland, Holst at the age of 21 entered the newspaper field in 1898, at a time when journalism was still considered "a man's job". She became an art, literary and dramatic critic for the chief Amsterdam papers, and came into close contact with most of the artists of her own country and many foreign artists traveling through Holland, working first for De Telegraf newspaper in The Hague, which was one of the leading papers in Amsterdam.In 1907, she married Willem Holst, an expert in Oriental Art, and went to live in Japan. During her seventeen years there, she contributed articles to newspapers in Amsterdam, Surabaya, Java, London and New York. Many of her reviews have appeared in The New York Times and The Saturday Review of Literature. Henriette Holst was a contributor to The New York Times and the Saturday Review of Literature. While in Japan, she published "Study on the life of Japanese Woman" in the Dutch language. Mrs. Holst began to lecture in Yokohama, Japan when the Alliance Francaise asked her to relate her interviews with the famous Sarah Bernhardt.
In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake hit and destroyed everything. Only themselves surviving, they came back to Holland where her children continued to study, and the following year moved to New York. Henriette spoke several times at the Great Neck Town Hall under the auspices of different societies – the League for Political Education and the Netherland-American Foundation among them. After one of her lectures the Netherlands Legation appointed her to represent Holland at a world conference in Washington, DC.
Mrs. Holst was managed by William B. Feakins Inc. located at Times Building, New York. She was President of the New York Branch of the Netherlands Abroad Society. She appeared before many women's clubs and gave talks at schools, clubs and summer camps. In Great Neck she was active in the Great Neck Players. She died from cancer on August 22, 1933 at the age of 56.
Denmark
In Denmark, women became editors early on by inheriting papers form their spouses, the earliest examples being Sophie Morsing, who inherited Wochenliche Zeitung from her husband in 1658 and managed the paper as editor, and Catherine Hake, who inherited the paper Europäische Wochentliche Zeitung as widow the following year – as far as it is known, though, these women did not write in their papers.The first woman in Denmark to publish articles in Danish papers was the writer Charlotte Baden, who occasionally participated in the weekly MorgenPost from 1786 to 1793. In 1845, Marie Arnesen became the first woman to participate in the public political debate in a Danish newspaper, and from the 1850s, it became common for women to participate in public debate or contribute with an occasional article: among them being Caroline Testman, who wrote travel articles, and Athalia Schwartz, who was a well known public media figure through her participation in the debate in the papers between 1849 and 1871. In the 1870s, the women's movement started and published papers of their own, with women editors and journalists.
It was not until the 1880s, however, that women begun to be professionally active in the Danish press, and Sofie Horten likely became the first woman who supported herself as a professional journalist when she was employed at Sorø Amtstidende in 1888. An important pioneer was Loulou Lassen, employed at the Politiken in 1910, the first female career journalist and a pioneer female journalist within science, also arguably the first nationally well known woman in the profession. In 1912, eight women were members of the reporter's union Københavns Journalistforbund, five in the club Journalistforeningen i København and a total of 35 women employed as journalists in Denmark.
Egypt
was the first woman in the Arab world to publish a journal concerning only women's issues. Zaynab Fawwaz was another prolific journalist who also founded a literary salon.Finland
The Swedish journalist and editor Catharina Ahlgren was most likely the first female journalist and editor in the then Swedish province of Finland when she published her own essay paper, the Swedish language Om att rätt behaga in 1782, which was also among the first papers in Finland.Traditionally, the first female journalist has been referred to as Fredrika Runeberg, who wrote poems and articles in Helsingfors Morgonblad under the name of her spouse Johan Ludvig Runeberg in the 1830s. The first woman in Finland to work as a journalist in Finland under her own name was Adelaïde Ehrnrooth, who wrote in Helsingfors Dagblad and Hufvudstadsbladet for 35 years from 1869 onward.
France
Women's involvement in journalism came early in France. Women having been active within the printing and publishing business since Yolande Bonhomme and Charlotte Guillard in the early 16th century, the first female journalists appeared almost from the beginning when the press and the profession of journalism developed in the 17th and early 18th century. Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer has been referred to as the perhaps first female celebrity journalists in France and Europe. Her reports of the negotiations leading to the Peace of Utrecht were read all over Europe, and admired for the distinction with which she reported on scandal and gossip.During the 18th century, women were active as publishers, chief editors and journalists in the French press. Female authors such as Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and Adélaïde Dufrénoy contributed with articles to the press, and chief editors such as Madeleine Fauconnier of the Nécrologe of Paris and Justine Giroud of the Affiches, annonces et avis-divers du Dauphiné of Grenoble 1774–1792, enjoyed successful careers in both the capital and the provinces.
The feminist press developed, and Madame de Beaumer, Catherine Michelle de Maisonneuve and Marie-Emilie Maryon de Montanclos all successively functioned as chief editors and directors of the women's magazine Journal des dames. During the French Revolution, women editors such as Marguerite Pagès-Marinier, Barbe-Therese Marchand, Louise-Félicité de Kéralio and Anne Félicité Colombe participated in the political debate.
During the 19th century, it was not uncommon for women to participate in the French press, but the majority of them were not professional journalists but writers such as George Sand, who only contributed on a temporary basis. In the second half of the 19th century, the women's movement started their own magazines with female journalists, though they were seldom professional full-time reporters.
During the 1880s and 1890s, about a dozen women journalists were employed in the French press. They were considered the pioneer generation of professional women reporters in France, among whom Caroline Rémy de Guebhard and Marguerite Durand are often referred to as the pioneers. Caroline Rémy de Guebhard, pen-name Severine, was employed by the Cri du Peuple in 1880s and has been referred to as the first female reporter in France.