Revisiting journalism as a profession in the 19th century: Empirical findings on women journalists in Central Europe

This contribution raises the question whether journalism at its beginnings was indeed a profession only for men, as much of the research literature suggests. However, the assumption of a “gendered profession” may also be due to gendered research patterns that produce and reproduce a gendered academic discourse on journalism. The study presented here puts these questions to test and investigates the cultural, social and work-related position of female writers in German-speaking countries at the end of the 19th century. The data is based on a complete census collected between 1896 and 1898. In a second step, the occupation and opus of female writers who worked for periodicals will be analyzed along established concepts of journalism in order to illustrate how women are systematically excluded by dominant concepts of what journalism is and journalists actually do.