One hundred years ago
WOMEN AS JOURNALISTS.
It was inevitable that women should take to journalism as a profession, and therefore it was inevitable that some of the heaviest and most grievous burdens of that profession should fall upon their shoulders. What else could be' expect- ed? They had received the education of the other sex, and, with the exception of journalism and medicine — if, indeed, the life of a doctor can yet be said to be open to them — they were debarred from following the careers to which a man's education leads. Whatever may be possible in America, an Englishwom- an cannot become a clergyman or a bar- rister, a soldier or a sailor, even though she pass triumphantly all the tests and examinations which those professions exact. Consciousness of her newly acquired faculties, and sometimes a dire necessity, have driven her into the one field open to her to dispute with man for its rewards. Men may look at her askance, and her fellow-women regard her with suspicion, but she fights bravely on, turning her very disadvantages into advantages, ousting selfish man by her superior power of self-sacrifice, and converting her own manifest weakness into strength. Why should not a woman become journalist? asks common-sense. What more suitable occupation could she find than to fill-in her idle hours at home by writing for the papers, and supplying the same with the products of her lighter fancies, or the outcome of the sweet reasonableness and dainty logic that is so characteristic of her sex? Unfortunately, in the new division of labour, it is not the lighter and more pleasant toil that has fallen to a woman's lot. As a rule, she sues for employment in forma pauperis; not in the strength of her superior capacity for the task, but because she must have some task, and because she is willing to take anything that is given her, however burdensome and ill-paid. In fact, she 1,s willing to undersell her male comPerl" tor, — and, under the circumstances, who shall blame her? But the natural result is that she thereby undertakes the most disagreeable and thankless of the labours which are entailed by a journal- ist's life. The Spectator 17 June 1893
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