This thesis analyzes the expectations and experiences of gender equality for women working in journalism in the United Kingdom between 1970 and 2013. The 176 women were at different stages of their careers, some having just started in the profession and others were of retirement age and thus, had entered the profession during the decade that equality became a legal right in the workplace for all women in the UK. The methodology derives from a phenomenological approach to capturing experiences and also referred to feminist research practices. Three data collection tools were used: an online survey, face-to-face interviews and reflective pieces of autobiographical writing. The research shows that women in journalism have had widespread experiences of gender inequality during the timescale, which have been analyzed through a thematic approach. The key findings were: the culture of male-dominated newsrooms was seen as having a ‘domino effect’ on other issues of gender inequalities highlighted in the study; the single major career challenge impacting women journalists’ experiences of equality arose when they had a family; also there has been little progress in terms of the opportunities open to women in the profession, both as a result of issues often categorized as vertical and horizontal segregation – such as the impact of the ‘glass ceiling’ and the continued existence of a culture that views certain specialisms as ‘jobs for the girls’. The research also examined the emerging effects of the internet and online journalism and that it had the potential to lead to greater opportunities for women, although experiences were found to be mixed and were particularly negative among women who had been journalists since the 1990s. The research serves as an original contribution to knowledge from a number of perspectives: by providing a platform for female journalists’ ‘lived experiences’ on gender equality to be documented, as well as its comparative approach to expectations and experiences of gender equality in the profession i.e. according to the decade that the women became journalists. The study concludes overall that women journalists in the UK experience a maximum of 12 years in the profession before they face some form of gender discrimination, resulting in the view that gender equality has not been achieved in journalism during the period since legislation was first introduced in 1970.

This thesis analyses the political journalism of a number of early twentieth-century French female writers, namely Colette, Marcelle Capy, Jane Misme, Madeleine Pelletier, Nelly Roussel, and Madeleine Vernet. The aim of the study is to examine how these female journalists shaped media representations of women throughout the First World War in France. Their journalism did this by moving away from the established two-dimensional helpless and/or negative female 'characters'· (such as the victim of rape, the self-sacrificing baby-maker, the profiteer, the spy or the defeatist) so prevalent in wartime print culture, and, instead, encouraged powerful alternative female roles. This work's ultimate aim, and most innovative contribution, is to propose a more complex understanding of women's roles and opinions in First \Vorld \Var France and ·how these were represented, constructed and codified by a number of female journalists in reaction to the mainstream discourse of the national press. This thesis begins with a historical examination of women's entry into the journalistic medium in France. Then, using textual analysis and consideration of the historical context, I demonstrate how this selected First \Vorld \Var women's journalism developed from its initial focus on the female body to examine other political wartime propagandist female images. Though these writers often constructed their arguments by borrowing from and building on ideas originating in the pacifist and minority press, I argue that their privileged position as women (and therefore so-called moral guardians of the nation) gave their value-laden and eloquent arguments added influence in a time ofwar. This thesis evaluates a number of sources, ranging from archived newspapers, published collections of journalism, special archival collections concerning particular journalists (including autobiographical and biographical texts) and, in the case of the Helene Brion trial, legal documents and transcripts. In aggregate, these texts are indicative ofwomen's representation at a key moment in history: the 'golden age' of the French press. In drawing together and reading across such diverse source materials, a qualitative analysis is proposed, firstly, of the persuasive counter-arguments utilised and counter-icons created by women in reaction to national press in selected journalistic pieces, and secondly, of the manner in which these writers encouraged a particularised space of dialogue that facilitated the growth of an 'imagined community' of female readers, writers and correspondents. Though women's roles in the Great War have regained popularity as a subject of research, there still remains a dearth of study on women's journalism of the period. Despite the large number ofwomen who were involved in newspaper writing, there are no studies that focus solely on French women's First World War journalism as an important field of study. This thesis therefore adds another important dimension to the growing area of research concerning women's writing of the First World War.

This study contributes to current critical discussions about the figure of the Victorian woman journalist. Most previous scholarship on nineteenth-century female journalism has focused either on women's anonymous writings or on their contributions to conventionally feminine genres like serial fiction and prose articles on domesticity and fashion. Although women's campaigning journalism has attracted some attention, especially from historians of feminism, its role in the professionalization of women writers has gone largely unexamined. Consequently, it has been assumed that female journalists did not write on social and political issues, unless they wrote anonymously or as reformers with little interest in developing careers as presswomen. This thesis radically revises this view by showing the mid-century rise of female journalists who wrote on serious social and political topics and earned national and international repute. They broke the codes of anonymity in a number of ways, including signing articles in their own names and developing distinctly female personae. They presented themselves as model middle-class professional authors: knowledgeable, financially independent and vocationally committed. They proved, by example, women's fitness for conventionally masculine lines of journalism. By examining their careers in the periodical press, my thesis offers the first in-depth analysis of 'high-minded' female journalism in Victorian England. Beginning with the 1850s, the thesis is organised around certain key developments in the periodical press, such as the debates about professional authorship, discussions of the plight of single women and the nature of female work, and the advent of signed publication. It examines the rise of prestigious presswork by women through the study of three distinct, yet overlapping models of the female professional journalist: the feminist journalist, the mainstream reform journalist, and the foreign correspondent. It then discusses the representation of women's high-minded journalism in the domain of fiction. The study ends in the 1880s, noting how these mid-Victorian models of women's presswork influenced the discussion and practice of female professional journalism in the 1890s.