"It can be a stigma to announce that you are a feminist journalist"

Flag of the feminist movement -

They recently made the news with the publication of

(ed. Allary),

(ed. Les Arènes) and

(Grasset) three books in which journalists Lauren Bastide, Léa Salamé and Alice Coffin highlight their feminism and address their place in society.

The questions they address make these journalists an essential relay for feminist demands.

“MeToo was a blast for me”, recently declared Léa Salamé to 20 Minutes.

However, these journalists are not the first to assert the voice of women in the French media landscape.

Who are the powerful women in the media?

What does it mean to be a female journalist?

What are the relationships between journalism and feminism?

Bibia Pavard, lecturer at the University of Paris-II and co-author of

(ed. La Découverte), returns for

on these questions.

As a researcher in the history of women, gender and feminism, how would you define the term “powerful women”?

The term appeared recently and has no unambiguous definition.

It designates inspiring women.

This is characteristic of a desire to seek role models in history to enable young women to identify with themselves.

This corresponds to the development of feminist movements and studies on women and gender at the university.

Studies that have shown that female figures are erased from the historical narrative taught in school and university.

By "powerful women", we can speak of women of power such as queens, regents, ministers ... But also women who have a known and recognized social role, who are part of posterity.

The adjective can also refer to physical power.

There are representations of powerful women in mass culture and in history.

Théroigne de Méricourt, during the French Revolution, or the sans-culottes women in Versailles, on October 5, 1789, are warrior women who, however, are not put forward because the physical strength of women disturbs.

There are stereotypical constructions of the masculine and the feminine where strength of character and physical strength are associated with masculine specificities while the feminine is associated with gentleness and kindness.

Being a powerful woman, in the mouths of those who use this term, is therefore a way of subverting these gendered images and proposing others.

Would you say that women journalists are powerful women?

If we consider that the media are the fourth estate, we can say so.

They have an important role in the possibility of making visible other women, and this is what a certain number of journalists do today in the editorial staff.

They seek out experts, writers, politicians, and construct their stories differently, less focused on physical characteristics and more on moral characteristics or actions of women.

The involvement of women in the media was quite late, for a long time, writing was a struggle.

What are the links between women journalists and the feminist cause?

Narrow and at the same time complex.

Many women are involved in feminist causes, such as journalist Séverine, and feminists have also produced their own media, such as Marguerite Durand, founder of the newspaper

 in 1897. They have built themselves in journalism in order to be able to give an echo to their cause.

In the practice of journalism, what distinguishes women and men?

Sociological studies consider that the feminization of the profession has gone hand in hand with the transformation of journalistic writing, with regard to the fact of being more interested in biographical paths, characters, and individual specificities in political journalism. especially.

One of the corollaries of the feminization of editorial staff is the emergence of subjects related to women and feminism.

However, as with men, there are many ways of being a journalist.

The particular exercise of the interview is important in journalism.

Who are the interviewers who have marked the history of the media in France?

Political journalism being the noblest genre in the profession, I think of Jacqueline Baudrier who was forgotten when her role was important.

After having been at the presentation of the newspaper of France Inter in the 1960s and 1970s, she was at the head of Radio France.

Little is known about it, but it was she who, with Alain Duhamel in 1974, led the presidential debate between François Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

The book

(éd. Nouveau Monde) by Marlène Coulomb-Gully studies the paths of a certain number of French journalists who have marked the history of the political interview.

She cites the names of Arlette Chabot, Christine Ockrent, Audrey Pulvar, or Anne Sinclair.

At the forefront of feminization, the careers of these journalists may have been thwarted compared to those of their male colleagues.

They were then exceptions in the French media landscape.

Do you think they are criticized only because of their gender?

These women are often criticized for their style, their voice too high, their speed of speech, their way of dressing, or their way of being.

This reveals that they do not fit the interviewer model which, like the political representative, was designed for men.

They put a grain of sand in a cog of well-anchored representations.

A new generation of alternative media journalists such as Lauren Bastide, with the podcast La Poudre, or Charlotte Bienaimé, with Un podcast à soi, proclaim themselves feminists.

Can we say that today feminist movements influence the work of interviewers?

We are in a particular moment of both intimate and complex relations between journalism and feminism.

Young journalists do not hesitate to call themselves feminists when this is not obvious.

It can be a stigma to announce a political color for a profession that wants to be neutral and independent.

By their demands, they show that journalistic neutrality does not exist.

We are dealing with an activist revival that is creating a window of opportunity for journalists who have created their media on alternative platforms.

They have appropriated a new space that is not completely formatted and institutionalized in order to be able to express a voice of journalist and feminist.

It is through these experiments, which have met with success with the public, that feminist questions have entered more traditional writing.

For example, in the newspaper

, there was a desire to deal with feminicides.

It's a form of engagement.

Each year since 2007, the Philippe Caloni prize rewards the best interviewer of the year.

Out of twelve awards, only three women obtained it.

Is it more complicated for a woman to get recognition?

Yes it is more complicated because cultural recognition is socially constructed, it reflects the state of a social environment.

As journalism is historically male, this only redoubled the fact that women are seen as a minority in a largely feminized profession.

The same type of phenomenon is observed for literary and cinematographic prices.

Do you think that journalists, men and women, are now aware of feminist issues?

Yes, definitely.

We are no longer in the context of the emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement in 1970, where the media system was still largely dominated by men.

Today, the feminization of the profession and the relaying of feminist issues by young journalists, make us more receptive to the media coverage of women and feminist demands.

Journalists explain them more than they decry them.

We are in a special moment that is transforming the ways of being a journalist.

Media

"MeToo was a blast for me", explains Léa Salamé who is releasing the book "Powerful Women"

Cinema

"The Good Wife" defends feminism in joy and good humor

• Feminism

• Journalism

• Deontology

• Journalist

• Womens rights

• Media