Methodological Bases
I
n order to study the emancipation movements of women at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, it is essential to examine female journals published during these decades.1 In case of my research – dealing with the representation of female labour before the outbreak of the First World War – I analyze the articles of The Women and The Society (A Nő és a Társadalom), which had been published by the Hungarian Feminists’ Association.The volumes of this journal offer excellent opportunity to survey several wage-earn-er activities discussed by Hungarian and non-Hungarian journalists, intellectuals, art-ists and members of international women’s associations. They also show that feminart-ists’
movements of this period dealt not only with the extension of suffrage to women, but also found it crucial to improve their working conditions.
In this paper, I focus on the methodological background of my subject as well as the most important questions I have posed since the beginning of the research work.
How is it possible to interpret texts written by determined feminists objectively? Why should be paid distinguished attention to the linguistic and grammatical features of the articles? In connection with these problems, I fi nd it essential to elude to certain aspects of news- and discourse analysis, which served as fundamental bases from the fi rst steps of my research. I insert some diagrams in the text in order to give a more comprehensive picture about the foregoing results of my research work.
Aim of this Research
At the beginning of my research process I proceeded from the principle that the emancipation movement of the female gender highly accelerated at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. Firstly – already from the second half of the 1800s – girls got the opportunity to go on to secondary and to higher education.2 Besides this, several females’ associations were founded, which started to publish their own journals. In these
1 KÉRI 2008. 22.
2 Due to a series of educational acts, in the more developed parts of Western-Europe as well as in the United States of America, secondary grammar schools opened their doors to women gradually from the 1840s. In ad-dition to this, young women had the chance to study at universities from the 1870s (SCHWARZ 2004. 941–962.;
SULLEROT 1971. 127–128.). On the other hand, in less prosperous regions – Hungary was among these coun-tries – girls were able to go on to higher education only towards the end of the 19th century (PAJKOSSY 2006.
726–729.).
periodicals, they spread and proclaimed their thoughts and opinions in connection with the subordinated situation of the “weaker gender”.
As a result of the above-mentioned factors, females – after several centuries – fi nally managed to fi nd themselves. However, they were well aware of the fact that they can only be equal with their male counterparts if they leave the households, go out to work and become able to support themselves in fi nancial terms.
In Hungary, several scholars have already dealt with female work during the Dualis-tic Era.3 As a result of this, my primary aim has been to examine this topic from a brand new perspective, with the help of news analysis and discourse analysis.
The Woman and the Society
As my research is closely connected with news analysis and with the history of the press, I fi nd it inevitable to discuss and emphasize the most important attributes of female journals. The fi rst periodicals addressing the female readership had been published in the Unites States of America and in the more-developed Western-European countries gradually from the 1850s. In Hungary, these papers appeared with a large phase delay, only from the fi rst decade of the 20th century.4 This fi rst successful attempt is related to the Hungarian Feminists’ Association.5 They published The Woman and The Society, which is the periodical that I have examined. The Woman and the Society had been published between the years of 1907 and 1913 reporting news from Hungarian as well as non-Hungarian females.6 The editor of this journal was Rosika Schwimmer, who became the leading fi gure of the Hungarian feminist movement before the First World War.7 Besides the fi ght for female suffrage, women’s wage-earning activity is among the most fundamental subjects of the paper. Among the other topics, we have to highlight problems connected to the education of women as well as to the protection of mothers and their children. Additionally, several articles report on prostitution and white-slavery.
Questions, hypotheses
The fi rst hypothesis that I formulated at the beginning of my research work is connected to the main purposes of women’s movements in Hungary before 1914. According to my primary presumption, the most important aim of the Hungarian Feminists’ Association was not only to obtain the right to vote for females but to safeguard the interests of women workers. Having proved this assumption, I have begun to seek answers to my remaining questions. I have examined the subject-matter of the articles as I wanted to get to know the ideas which had been transmitted about the working conditions of Hungarian and non-Hungarian females in the articles.
3 Among the most important historians and social scientists, we defi nitely have to mention the names of Kornélia Burucs, Orsolya Kereszty, Katalin Kéri and Mariann Nagy.
4 NAGYDIÓSINÉ 1957. 193.
5 This association was formed in 1904 and functioned until 1942 after merging with other women’s clubs (BURUCS 1993. 15–19.).
6 KERESZTY 2011. 290–304.
7 KERESZTY 2005.
At the beginning of the 20th century, print journalism proved to be the most essential channel for the spreading of certain ideas, opinions and ideologies.8 The society relied on the newspapers which were considered to be primary – and also inexhaustible – sources of information. Due to this fact, I have made attempts to explore different types of the so called journalistic behavior. I intended to collect specifi c tools which were employed by journalists so that they would infl uence the opinions of their readers.
The representation of female work in The Woman and the Society Unfortunately, I do not have the opportunity to examine all the 84 issues of The Woman and the Society. In spite of this fact, I intend to provide a comprehensive picture about the representation of female labour in the periodical.9 I have employed the statistical method of occasional sampling and selected 28 issues, which I have studied. In these 28 issues, roughly 840 shorter and longer pieces of writing can be read. Among these 840 articles, altogether 241 stories are dealing with the working conditions of women.
In my opinion, this is defi nitely a considerable number, constituting almost 30% of the total number of articles.
It is clearly visible on the diagram below that the number of writings discussing the topic of female labour proves to be the highest in the volume of 1908. During this year, altogether 49 pieces appear in the journal reporting about working women. On
8 László Katus denotes that this is the period when „the revolution of news media” had been carried out (KATUS 2010. 512.).
9 According to the original plans of Rosika Schwimmer, The Woman and the Society would have been a weekly paper. Soon it became clear that the Hungarian Feminists’ Association lack the suffi cient amount of money to publish the periodical twice or even four times a month (KERESZTY 2011. 91.). The editorial stuff made efforts for years to bring out the issues of the journal more often, but these attempts remained unsuccessful. (For these efforts see: WS 1909. I./ 1. 13.; WS 1910. IV./ 6. 89.)
Distribution of newspaper articles discussing females’ wage-earning activity in the examined issues of
The Woman and the Society, from 1907 to 1913
the other hand, the number of news stories dealing with this subject decrease gradually from 1910. Questions and problems connected to the working conditions of females remain slightly important in 1913, as only 12 writings are published in this subject.
Orsolya Kereszty and Katalin Szegvári believe that the reason for this is the fact that feminists’ interest shifted from the protection of working women towards their fi ght for female suffrage.10 However, my own investigation have pointed out that during the preceding years of the First World War the Feminists’ Association urged the importance of pacifi sm instead of women’s right to vote.11
Frames of the research work
In order to justify my presuppositions with facts, I imply both quantitative and qualitative methods. Firstly, I prepared statistics on the bases of articles which were published in the selected issues of The Woman and the Society in connection with female labour. In these tables – altogether 28 – I have indicated at fi rst the imprints of the issues in which I found the newspaper articles. Secondly, I the authors, the genres and the subject-matters of the articles have been denoted. After that, references have been made to the content of the actual pieces. Finally, the names of the countries or cities have been added with which the journalists are dealing in the articles. These tables have served as fundamental bases for the further steps of the research.
I consider it essential to examine certain characteristic features of the periodical, e.g. the gender, the qualifi cation and the nationality of journalists as well as the social background of the readership. It is also inevitable to study the genres and the subject-matters of the articles in greater details. Additionally, it is worth taking a closer look to the nationalities of those female workers who are represented in the periodical.
Apart from the previously-mentioned factors, it is also crucial to study the discourse structure, the style as well as the recurring grammatical features and set phrases in the text of the articles.
Considering these methods, it is clearly visible that this research relies not only to the sources of female history but also employs the methods of news analysis, discourse analysis and text linguistics.
Genres of the examined articles
According to my following presumption, certain genres of the articles suppose set content elements and set stylistic structures. In order to get to know, whether this is relevant or not, I have arranged the examined articles into groups on the bases of their genres.12 I composed three larger clusters, in which altogether 12 genre-categories can be found.
Informative articles, namely news with and without titles as well as reports belong to the fi rst comprehensive group. In general, these 163 pieces of writing are very brief
10 SZEGVÁRI 1969. 143.; KERESZTY 2011. 214.
11 If we turn over the pages of volumes which were published after 1910, we can observe that the topic of female suffrage slowly becomes neglected. On the other hand, several writings describe the female gender as a group who has a great mission to fulfi l in terms of preserving the peace.
12 During this step my research work has been facilitated by the genre theory of László Bernáth. (BERNÁTH 1994.)
– they are made up of two or three sentences – and concise. The sentences of these ar-ticles are short and they can be characterized by objective or even a neutral style.13 As opposed to this, articles expressing the viewpoints of journalists are longer and more compact. Altogether 76 commentaries, debate articles, feature stories, glosses, leading articles and short stories have been ranked in this group. ‘Articles inside the paper’
belong here as well. These pieces are analytical as their aim is to persuade the reader.
They tend to take moralist and slightly emotional positions towards their subject-matter as their style is often emotive, sometimes even ironical and furious.14 Only 8 pieces have been placed in the third category, in which the so called supplementary articles can be found. The stylistic elements of letters and readers’ letters are similar to the typical at-tributes of articles belonging to the second group, but their structure is different.
In terms of these elements, I intend to prove that the journalists’ main aim is not the scolding of their male counterparts. On the contrary, they make attempts to solve the problems of female workers. Furthermore, I fi nd it fundamental to investigate, whether we can fi nd any interconnections between the length of the writings and the informa-tion-value which is stated in them.
Content of the articles
Anna McKane asserts that choosing the adequate words in a piece of news is absolutely necessary.15 Certain phrases highly contribute to how the reader’s opinion is formulated about an article.16 As text-organizers, the so called keywords – words and expressions of critical importance – play an essential role in establishing the coherence of the texts both in terms of their content and structure. Furthermore, they infl uence the functional construction – i.e. the division of paragraphs – of the discourse.17
Similarly to the above-mentioned journalists and linguists, I also believe that the essence of an article is partly given by the signifi cant words within the text, thus study-ing them is indispensible. Followstudy-ing the journalistic practice, I have been examined the subject-matter of the articles on the bases of those keywords which can be found in the news text. One – or sometimes two or three – keywords have been selected from every article dealing with the wage-earning activity of the “weaker gender”. As a result of this, 12 subject-categories and 4 larger groups have been composed: articles dealing with intellectual, scientifi c and artistic occupations of females belong to the fi rst cluster.
Journalistic scoops are ranked here as well. Pieces of news discussing the situation of industrial and agricultural workers belong to the second category. The circumstances of female clerks and women labourers employed by the service sector are placed in the third cluster. The fourth group is made up of articles reporting about the exploitation of women workers, along with women’s trade-union movements, the protection of the
“weaker gender” and the placing of employees. It can be observed in the diagram that the ratio of articles, which share details about women pursuing intellectual professions,
13 The majority of informative articles covey the news with objectivity and the usage of technical terms is more frequent.
14 Conboy states that the language of these articles is „emotionally charged”. (CONBOY 2006. 14.)
15 MCKANE 2006. 94.
16 Mike Scott characterizes this ‘keyness’ as “a quality of words may have given in a text (…) suggesting that they are important, they refl ect what the text is really about” (SCOTT 2006. 14).
17 ANDOR 2009. 24–27.
is the highest. On the other hand, the ratio of writings reporting about certain journal-istic scoops proves to be the lowest.
The 12 category, which has been composed based on the subject-matter of the articles
Representation of Hungarian and non-Hungarian women
Newspaper articles are capable of illustrating the courses of events which infl uence the everyday lives of the readers.18 Nevertheless, the following question may come up: is the news value of an accomplished event raised by the geographical proximity or by the importance of the actual occurrence?19 In case of The Woman and the Society, both factors seem to play a signifi cant role, as the periodical regularly publishes articles about the working conditions of non-Hungarian female labourers. Thus, it seems to be logical to investigate, which European and overseas countries appear in the columns of the paper.
Although, several social scientists have stated that international dimension among the contemporary women’s movements proves to be very powerful, it is still surprising that the editorial stuff of The Woman and the Society pays considerably more attention to foreign women that their Hungarian counterparts. Out of the 241 articles I have ex-amined, only 103 writings covers news about Hungarian working women.20 I think, the reason for this can be found in the fact that the wage-earning activity of females living in more-developed western counties served as positive examples for the Hungarians. A vast number of writings can be read about the excellent working conditions of English,
18 SCHUDSON 1995. 14.
19 According to the German publicist, Walter von la Roche, a newspaper article provokes the interest of readers, if it contains as much as possible from the following values: prominent persons, emotional ties, consequences of the established events, confl icts and fi ghts (LA ROCHE 2008. 70.).
20 The majority of these pieces are ‘Budapest-centered’. As the capital city became the heart of the Hungarian industry and economy, the ratio of working women turned to be considerably higher here than in other parts of the county (NAGY 1994. 158.; NAGY 2006. 205–222.).
French, Dutch, German and Eastern European women as opposed to the miserable cir-cumstances of Hungarian female labourers.
In contradiction to my preconceptions, only few articles report about other regions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy – such as Croatia, Slovenia or Bohemia. Similarly to this, only few pieces are concerned with the United States of America. This is the more surprising as theoretical literature dealing with the history of “weaker gender” state that Hungarian females followed in the footsteps of North-American women.
Besides the above-mentioned factors, there is one more attribute which is important to investigate, namely in connection with the articles published about the less-devel-oped peripheral countries. If we read through the pieces of writings brought out about female work in e.g. the southern regions of Europe, in North-America or in Asia and Oceania, we may notice that only highly positive attributes are emphasized. Accord-ing to my opinion, these pieces cannot represent the real image about these countries.
Instead of this, these are only journalistic tricks to make Hungarian women realize that they have to fi ght for better working conditions.
Conclusion
Naturally, the foregoing results of this research are far from being absolutely representative as it is diffi cult to draw universal and general conclusions on the basis of 241 articles. In the future, however, this work is going to serve as a basis for further research. I am planning to expand my investigation to the remaining issues of The Woman and the Society. Furthermore, I intend to examine an Austrian female journal – New Woman’s Life (Neues Frauenleben) – which had been published in Vienna by the General Austrian Women’s Association (Allgemeiner Österreichicher Frauenverein). By means of studying this paper – more precisely its issues which were issued between the years of 1907 and 1913 – I will have the opportunity to put this subject-matter into a larger context. Besides this, I will be able to compare and contrast the career prospects of Hungarian and Austrian women before the outbreak of the First World War.
References Primary Source
The Woman and the Society. 1907–1913. (A Nő és a Társadalom)
Works Cited
ANDOR 2009 = ANDOR, József: A kulcsszavakról. In: Sebestyén, Z. – Surányi, Zs. (Eds.): A nyelv, az irodalom és a kultúra varázsa. Pannon Egyetemi Kiadó. Veszprém, 2009. 23–28.
BERNÁTH 1994 = BERNÁTH, László: Műfajismeret. MÚOSZ. Pécs, 1994.
BURUCS 1993 = BURUCS, Kornélia: Nők az egyesületekben. História. 1993./ 2. 15–19.
CONBOY 2006 = CONBOY, Martin. Tabloid Britain. Constructing a Community Trough Language.
Routledge Publishing Ltd. London, 2006.
KATUS 2010 = KATUS, László: A modern Magyarország születése. Magyarország története 1711–
1914. Egyetemi tankönyv. Pécsi Történettudományért Kulturális Egyesület. Pécs, 2010.
KERESZTY 2011 = KERESZTY, Orsolya: Egy folyóirat a művelődésért: A Nő és a Társadalom
KERESZTY 2011 = KERESZTY, Orsolya: Egy folyóirat a művelődésért: A Nő és a Társadalom