The Paradoxes of the Public Sphere: Journalism, Gender, and Corruption in Mexico, 1940–70

This article examines the ways in which conceptions of gender and the public sphere affected Mexican print journalism in the period 1940 to 1970. Though the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) opened up some spaces for female journalists to write about politics, the expansion of industrial press operations in the immediate postrevolutionary period once again cut back opportunities. After 1940, women were generally relegated to writing about household affairs and society news. But, gendered ideas of what could and could not be written also had profound effects on the nature of mid-century journalism. On the one hand, the perceived link between femininity and the discussion of private spaces vaccinated against the exploration of corruption in the public sphere. On the other hand, in order to breach these regulations, both male and female journalists often adopted and subverted women's voices or their traditional discursive spaces.