There are certain departments of journalism which women have always had,
and probably will always have, to themselves: I mean the departments
comprising fashion, cookery and domestic economy, furniture, the toilet,
and (less exclusively) weddings and what is called society news. It is
unlikely that men will ever seriously compete with women in the business
of supplying the stuff which women as a sex are supposed to read. My own
belief is that men could deal very capably with these subjects, or most of
them, if they chose to assume the task; but there happens to be a
superstition that such matters are beyond a man's scope; men accept the
superstition, and leave them alone. Hence the distinctive "woman's sphere"
in journalism.

Now almost all the work falling within this sphere is done badly--with a
lack of technical skill which can only be described as shameful. I have
argued (in Chapter II.) that the defect is attributable to the early
training which women receive. A further explanation lies in the fact that,
in their particular field, they are never stimulated to improvement by the
sight of better performances than their own; the result, viewed
dispassionately, is deplorable.

In the first place, nearly all women's work dealing with feminine subjects
is in a special degree disfigured by slipshod writing. This is
particularly true of fashion articles, which are on the whole worse
written even than police reports in country newspapers. Of the scores of
fashion articles appearing week by week in journals of standing, not five
per cent. would pass muster as the work of men. I take up, for an example,
one of the "great London dailies," containing a short signed contribution
by a journalist whose fame as a chronicler of modes is unrivalled, a lady
who earns the wage of a Cabinet Minister, and has indeed arrived at the
highest places in her profession; and I find in the article the following