Journalism for Women | Page 3

to awaken it by means of
suggestion; and having awakened it, to show how it may be properly
excited to the fullest activity of which it is capable.
This book is an attempt to do these things, for women, in the art of
journalism.
Chapter II
Imperfections of the Existing Woman-Journalist.

Despite a current impression to the contrary, implicit in nearly every
printed utterance on the subject, there should not be any essential
functional disparity between the journalist male and the journalist
female. A woman doctor (to instance another open calling) is rightly

regarded as a doctor who happens to be a woman, not as a woman who
happens to be a doctor. She undergoes the same training, and submits
to the same tests, as the young men who find their distraction in the
music-halls and flirt with nurses. Her sex is properly sunk, except
where it may prove an advantage, and certainly it is never allowed to
pose as an excuse for limitations, a palliative for shortcomings. Least of
all is she credited (or debited) with any abnormality on account of it.
But towards the woman journalist our attitude, and her own, is
mysteriously different. Though perhaps we do not say so, we leave it to
be inferred that of the dwellers in Fleet Street there are, not two sexes,
but two species--journalists and women-journalists--and that the one is
about as far removed organically from the other as a dog from a cat.
And we treat these two species differently. They are not expected to
suffer the same discipline, nor are they judged by the same standards.
In Fleet Street femininity is an absolution, not an accident. The
statement may be denied, but it is broadly true, and can easily be
demonstrated.
Such a condition of affairs is mischievous. It works injustice to both
parties, but more particularly to the woman, since it sets an arbitrary
limit to healthy competition, while putting a premium on mediocrity. Is
there any sexual reason why a woman should be a less accomplished
journalist than a man? I can find none. Admitted that in certain fields--
say politics--he will surpass her, are there not other fields in which she
is pre-eminent, fields of which the man will not so much as climb the
gate? And even in politics women have excelled. There are at least
three women-journalists in Europe to-day whose influence is felt in
Cabinets and places where they govern (proving that sex is not a bar to
the proper understanding of _la haute politique_); whereas the man
who dares to write on fashions does not exist.
* * * * *
That women-journalists as a body have faults, none knows better than
myself. But I deny that these faults are natural, or necessary, or
incurable, or meet to be condoned. They are due, not to sex, but to the
subtle, far-reaching effects of early training; and the general remedies,

therefore, as I shall endeavour to indicate in subsequent chapters, lie to
hand. They seem to me to be traceable either to an imperfect
development of the sense of order, or to a certain lack of self-control. I
should enumerate them thus:--
First, a failure to appreciate the importance of the maxim: Business is
business. The history of most civil undertakings comprises, not one
Trafalgar, but many; and in journalism especially the signal _Business
is business_--commercial equivalent of _England expects_--must
always be flying at the mast-head. _On ne badine pas avec l'amour_--
much less with a newspaper. Consider the effects of any lapse from the
spirit of that signal in a profession where time is observed more strictly
than in pugilism, where whatever one does one does in the white light
of self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin
the prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse!
Alas, women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them
seem to have a superstition that a newspaper is an automaton and has a
will-to-live of its own; that somehow (they know not how) it will
appear, and appear fitly, with or without man's aid. They cannot
imagine the possibility of mere carelessness or omission interfering
with the superhuman regularity and integrity of its existence. The
simple fact of course is that in journalism, as probably in no other
profession, success depends wholly upon the loyal co-operation, the
perfect reliability, of a number of people--some great, some small, but
none irresponsible.
Stated plainly, my first charge amounts to this: women-journalists are
unreliable as a class. They are unreliable, not by sexual imperfection, or
from any defect of loyalty or good faith, but because they have not yet
understood the codes of conduct prevailing in the temples so recently
opened to them. On the hearth, their respect for