Gender and Grand Reporting in Interwar France

Abstract

This comparison of the leading male and female reporters in interwar France complicates gender distinctions in the careers and styles of grand reporters in France. Only eight interwar grand reporters were women. Did these women offer a different perspective than their male colleagues? Instead of answering this question by generalizing about disparate works by many male and a few female reporters, we focus on two newspaper series and two books on Shanghai published by Andrée Viollis (1870–1951) and Albert Londres (1884–1932) in the early 1930s. We apply to their reporting styles the literary technique of diaxis, or scoring how often authors use the first person to develop a sense of empathy in their readers or emotive phrases or grammatical configurations to evoke feelings about the subject. Our intersectional analysis shows that gender differences were closely associated with differences in their class and educational backgrounds, and hence in their social capital. The differences exclusively linked to gender involved their career paths, notably the interruptions of Viollis maternities, and their empathy toward their subjects. Viollis expressed more compassion toward individuals and more interest in their circumstances, which in turn resulted in a less racist approach to Shanghai.