Gender and the Solvency of Professionalism: Eastern German Journalism before and after 1989

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the intersection of gender, professionalism, and post-socialist transitions in East-Central Europe through a case study of the gender politics of journalistic labor in eastern Germany before and after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic from 1989 to 1990. Beginning with the concrete ethnographic problem that gender tends to be marginalized within eastern German journalists' contemporary narratives of professional experience and transition, the historical study offers clear evidence of the gendering of professional life both before and after 1989, and even of a notable shift in models of professional femininity. In the course of the article, the author builds toward the argument that the relative inattention to gender in post-socialist professional transitions can be retraced to what he describes as the “solvent” effect of professionalism upon social knowledge. By this, he means that professional economies of discourse and practice tend to subvert other dimensions of social knowledge (including gendered knowledge) in favor of professional identifications and meanings.