ABSTRACT
Speaking at the Sixth Annual Conference of the British Institute of Journalists held in Norwich in 1894, Catherine Drew, the only female London delegate to attend the conference, used the opportunity to hold ‘a brief […] for her own sex’. Like many of her fellow journalists, Drew presented journalism as an ‘open profession’ that did not filter its members through formal educational qualifications and entrance examinations, but could only be successfully undertaken by those gifted with the authorial skill and steadfast attitude required for presswork. However, as Drew noted, there were many who, perceiving women as incapable of keeping up with the ‘pace and rigors of journalistic work’, opposed their claims to professional status and denounced their admission to the Institute of Journalists as ‘a rash measure […] uncalled for, as the women would certainly prove themselves to be nuisances’. Making a strong case for ‘women as journalists, workers in the same field with the men who have made the Press in England a power, morally, politically, economically, and socially’, Drew underlined that women journalists had long proved their mettle by writing for newspapers as well as periodicals. She noted that even in ‘those early days when the professional writer’ was a ‘small […] factor in production’, there was not only the ‘ordinary journalist woman’ who ‘gave her time to fashion magazines’ but also ‘the exceptional woman’ who ‘contributed to the best leading journals of the day able reviews of scientific, philosophical, and literary books, with essays on what is now known as sociology’. As ‘brilliant examples’ of such distinguished female journalists, she named three women whose writings had not only provided them with a steady income but had also helped to bring about reforms in divorce laws, women’s education, and animal welfare: Caroline Norton, Harriet Martineau, and Frances Power Cobbe. As Susan Hamilton has noted, Drew’s invocation of these mid-century women journalists is ‘brief, yet rhetorically central in her argument’: they are cited as proof and promise of women’s success in professional journalism.
