Women in journalism and media professions
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 Women Journalists at the Turn of the 20th Century, Professor Tracy Lucht, lecture at Iowa state University, C-SPAN
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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 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 who published articles in Danish papers were 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 (1848–1927) 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 (Copenhagen Association of Journalists), five in the club Journalistforeningen i København (Journalist Association of Copenhagen) and a total of 35 women employed as journalists in Denmark.
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 very first papers in Finland.
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Wikipedia