1. In what ways did Habermas’ argument of the bourgeois public sphere and subsequent
feminist criticisms conceptualize the formation of feminism in modern media?
Introduction
Jurgen Habermas constructed a highly accepted concept of the emergence of the freedom of
speech and the free press as a succession to the age of enlightenment in the eighteenth
century. His concept was grounded on the initial separation of the public opinion from the
state, allowing general public discussion free from state regulation.
This study aims to establish the way in which the modern perception of feminism and
equality within the public realm and the free press were contextualized through the arguments
of Jurgen Habermas and his feminist critics. The essay looks at the defining ethoses of
feminists as modern society recognises them, as well as an introduction to Habermas’ theory
of the public sphere. Following this will be included the feminist criticisms of Habermas’
concept of the bourgeois public sphere, and arguments supporting the emergence of a secular
feminist sphere. The final chapter will determine women’s place in the modern public sphere
as a result of or despite the feminist movement. The conclusion of the essay will aim to draw
on both Habermas’ argument of the public sphere either in conjunction with, or opposing the
ideals of the feminist ideologies.
An introduction to feminism
Feminism, according to the oxford dictionary, is the advocacy of women’s rights on the
ground of the equality of the sexes. Traces of feminism date back to the early 18th century
(Goldstein, 1982:92) during the age of enlightenment and the bourgeois era. However it
became a greater established political movement in the early 20th century with the suffragette

2. movement, which was predominantly orientated around the suffrage of the middle class white
woman.
During World War 2 the feminist movement was assisted by the re-emergence of a liberal
public sphere, in which women were re-introduced into places of congregation that were
previously male dominated. However, the end of the war saw women once again excluded
from the bourgeois public sphere, and mass communication subjected women back to the
‘private’ sector of domestic affairs. (Ryan, 1992:260). The third wave of feminism was noted
in the 60’s and 70’s to reform the social frameworks that objectified women within the
workplace, the media and within other aspects of the public sphere.
Since the origins of feminism there have been three major conflicting interpretations of
feminist ideologies. These predominant strands of feminism consist of:
Liberal Feminism – This is the feminist ideology that humans are all born equal, regardless of
gender or class. Liberal feminists work towards diminishing barriers within the state and the
public sphere, through legislation and regulation. They also campaign Tuchman et al’s (1978)
view to stop the objectification and sexist representations within media and popular culture.
Radical Feminism – Radical feminists argue for female separatism and the segregation of
men and women within our society. They also argue that all social constructs are the result of
male dominance of the public sphere and are therefore men enforce sexist patriarchal
constraints within society.
Post-modern feminism – It has been argued that most-modern feminism is the most
significant strand of feminism to emerge. The argument is founded on the idea that modern
society now understood women’s ability to be successful and independent whilst still looking
after a family and a home. Post-modern feminism was a media-based movement that came

3. about mostly through music and the female acceptance into the public sphere of the twentieth
century.
Most feminist arguments would agree with Tuchman et al’s (1978) statement that women are
depicted within our media according to social stereotypes and constructs that are mainly
patriarchal and therefore misguided.
In the following chapter of this essay, Habermas’ argument of the public sphere will be
analysed to contextualize the emergence of the feminist public sphere through feminist
arguments of historical female exclusion in the Bourgeois public sphere of the 18th and 19th
centuries.
The public Sphere
The public sphere as it is known today was a revolutionary time in press freedom. It was a
time of bourgeois society in which the public were encouraged to think outside of and to
question the tutelage of the church and the state as a succession to the enlightenment age of
the 17th and 18th centuries. In The public sphere: An encyclopedia article (1964), Jurgen
Habermas describes the public sphere as the gathering and communication between privates
to form a public body, separate to the state, and to discuss matters of public interest. ‘Citizens
behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion- that is, with the
guarantee of freedom and assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish
their opinions- about matters of general interest.’ (Habermas, 1964:49). The public sphere
allowed a complete emancipation of the state, and therefore freedom of speech, resulting in a
public sphere that was completely liberal and able to express issues concerning the state on
behalf of the public. Peter Hohenddahl (1973) notes: ‘One of the primary goals of this
bourgeois public sphere was to make political and administrative decisions transparent.’

4. (Hohenddahl, 1973:46). These liberal and discursive public discussions meant that the public
were able to influence a democratic state through public participation.
The liberal public sphere in bourgeois society was unprejudiced and developed with the
purpose of connecting the state to the requirements of the public society. The private sector,
such as domestic issues and the economic market were to be kept separate from the public
sphere, thus allowing those included to discuss as peers, free from the prejudice of societal
status and to generate opinions that represented the public as one. In Habermas and the
Public Sphere Craig Calhoun (1992) notes: ‘In this public sphere, practical reason was
institutionalized through norms of reasoned discourse in which arguments, not statuses or
traditions, were to be decisive.’ (Calhoun, 1992:2). These public discussions and political
debate that made up the public sphere occurred in many different formats, from printed
publications to group gatherings in open social spaces, public halls and houses, as well as
within governments. Douglas Kellner, in his study of the public sphere and democracy notes:
‘For the first time in history, individuals and groups could shape public opinion, giving direct
expression to their needs and interests while influencing political practice. The bourgeois
public sphere made it possible to form a realm of public opinion that opposed state power and
the powerful interests that were coming to shape bourgeois society.’
In Habermas following work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, he describes the decline of the liberal public
sphere as an outcome of the criticisms against Kant’s liberal theologies, and thus the decline
of the age of enlightenment. This shift in ideologies transformed the liberal public sphere into
a capitalist and consumerist sphere which he describes as an age of ‘welfare state capitalism
and mass democracy.’ (Kellner). The new public sphere was constructed as a platform of
self-interest and elitism and was media-dominated, prompted by industrialization and

5. capitalism. Kellner notes: ‘This historical transformation is grounded, as noted, in
Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of the culture industry, in which giant corporations have
taken over the public sphere and transformed it from a sphere of rational debate into one of
manipulative consumption and passivity.’ Due to this transformation, the lines between state,
private and public opinion once again became blurred and instigated the demise of the liberal
public sphere and the rise of the bourgeois public sphere.
While Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere still takes public opinion into consideration, the
public no longer participate in political proceedings. Participants of the bourgeois public
sphere are required to be educated and are constituted by those in the free market and
representatives of organizations who negotiate between themselves and with government
officials. (McCarthy, 1991). The public transformed into a passive subject, its characteristics
now specified by the way in which the bourgeois sphere communicates with it, encompassing
methods such as publicity and public opinion polls. McCarthy (1991:12) notes: ‘The press
and broadcast media serve less as organs of public information and debate than as
technologies for managing consensus and promoting consumer culture.’
So far, this essay has looked at Habermas’ argument of the emergence of the public sphere in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This argument is extensively respected as a model
that gives form to the social-political structure of the bourgeois era and defines the
development of freedom of speech and the free press. There have been criticisms over
Habermas’ following works in The structural transformation of the public sphere, in which
he argues the demise of the liberal public sphere and the rise of the elitist bourgeois public
sphere. Critics argue that Habermas fails to fully establish the existence of counter public
spheres, constructed by the subordinate public of the time. The next chapter will be looking at
the feminist criticisms of Habermas’ gendered bourgeois public sphere.

6. Criticisms and Feminism in the bourgeois public sphere
Although Habermas model of the public sphere has been widely influential and accepted, his
elaboration of the concept in The structural transformation of the public sphere has been
central to controversy. Habermas focuses his argument of the bourgeois public sphere
predominantly on the emergence of the bourgeois coffee shops of the eighteenth century. It is
in these meeting places where the elite would converge to discuss current affairs and trade,
and soon became to include discussions of politics and state administration. (Calhoun,
1992:12). These discussions were documented in journals that were communicated between
other circles and throughout the country. ‘In France, salons, public institutions located in
private homes, played a crucial role, bridging a literary public sphere dominated by
aristocrats with the emergent bourgeois political public sphere.’ (Calhoun, 1992:12).
Habermas notes that the public outside of the bourgeois were few, and is criticized for not
including analysis of the gendered characteristics of the bourgeois public sphere.
Some critics highlight the exclusion of subordinate groups in Habermas’ argument of the
bourgeois public sphere, and the lack of analysis in his argument of other co-existing public
spheres outside of the bourgeois, accentuating the boundaries of Habermas’ concept.
Habermas suggests that the transformation of the public sphere increased inclusivity by
defining the mass public opinion through the use of mediation, yet is criticized in his failure
to acknowledge the gendered character of the bourgeois public sphere. ‘The gendered
character of the early public sphere is also less clearly linked to the theme of transformation
by “massification” than is exclusion on class grounds; inclusion of small numbers of elite,
literate women would not have transformed the bourgeois public sphere into a mass.’
(Calhoun, 1992:3).

7. Where feminists saw Habermas’ original liberal public sphere as an open and welcoming
realm, free of class or gender prejudice, the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere caused
max exclusion of gender and class. Nancy Fraser argues that the exclusion of certain classes
and subordinate genders from the bourgeois public forged counter publics that expanded
public debate, meaning that different ideas would have to be argued out:
‘Still, insofar as these counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant
publics, they help expand discursive space. In principle, assumptions that were previously
exempt from contestation will now have to be publicly argued out. In general, the
proliferation of subaltern counterpublics means a widening of discursive contestation, and
that is a good thing in stratified societies.’ (Fraser, 1990:67)
Mary Ryan suggests that the brief re-instatement of the liberal and participatory public sphere
during the civil rights and anti-war movements in the late 60’s only highlighted the limitation
of participation of the bourgeois public sphere, through the work of the women’s rights
movement of the time. The criticisms of gender were reinforced as one of the most long
standing and cemented restrictions of public access since the emergence of the bourgeois
public sphere. Women were categorically excluded from the bourgeois public sphere and
their ideologies consigned to a separate category of the ‘private’. ‘Their sex was the special
target of consumer culture, yet they were poorly represented among those who wielded power
both in state and the capitalist sectors.’ (Ryan, 1992:260).
Fraser notes that the development of the counterpublic in response to gender exclusion meant
that women were constructing their own platforms of integrating their opinion into the
political public debate. In the case of nineteenth century, elite, bourgeois women, this meant
constructing organizations that were exclusively for women- made up of voluntary
philanthropist and moral reform associations. ‘In some respects, these associations aped the

8. all-male societies built by these women's fathers and grandfathers; yet in other respects the
women were innovating, since they creatively used the here to fore quintessentially "private"
idioms of domesticity and motherhood precisely as springboards for public activity.’(Fraser,
1990:67).
The new platforms of public access for feminists in the nineteenth century meant that women
were able to express and demand acknowledgement of issues that were drawn from the
‘private’ sector and put them on the radar of the public agenda. In doing so, feminists were
able to establish guidelines for their political activism, and determine where lay the
foundations of gender character and inequality along the ‘private-public axis’. (Ryan,
1992:260). The counetrpublic feminist sphere exemplifies a renewed politicization of issues
of culture, literature and art from a female viewpoint, something that was widely neglected in
the bourgeois public sphere. Although the feminist public sphere is gender-specific and
drawn on female specific experiences which had previously been misrepresented by a culture
of male dominance, they also reached outwardly through the use of mass media to catalyse a
revision and reformation of cultural and discursive male-defined frameworks.
‘The feminist public sphere, in other words, serves a dual function: Internally, it generates a
gender specific identity grounded in a consciousness of community and solidarity among
women; externally, it seeks to convince society as a whole of the validity of feminist claims,
challenging existing structures of authority through political activity and theoretical critique.’
(Felski, 1989:168)
One problem faced by the new feminist sphere was recognising the disparities between the
theological idea of a unified public sphere and the reality of the everyday class and cultural
restrictions, often found between the educated and uneducated. By recognizing women as an
oppressed public was enabling acknowledgement of sexism but in turn appending other

9. differences, mainly those of unequal status. Thus it transpired that the feminist sphere was
unable to transcend existing power structures, but rather the focus on gender equality could
have worked to ‘obscure other equally fundamental structural inequalities within late
capitalism.’ (Felski, 1989:168).
Feminists do not argue completely against Habermas’ ideologies in The structural
transformation of the public sphere, as it is a valid and yet conceptual resource.
(Fraser,1992:110). The overriding criticism is Habermas’ failure to analyse the exclusion of
women in the bourgeois public sphere. Regardless of the feminist criticisms of Habermas’
ideological argument of the bourgeois public sphere, and women’s exclusion from it,
feminist’s works concerning mass media and its audiences have routinely, up until the
modern day, been enormously influenced by it. (Press, 2000:33). In the following chapter this
essay will look at the modern discourses of women in the public sphere and how Habermas’
bourgeois public sphere and the feminist movements shaped it.
Modern women and the public sphere
In modern society it is still possible to draw examples of female exclusion from the public
sphere as interpreted by the oppressed female community. The women’s movement saw the
public sphere as a general public- as anything outside of the realm to the private to which
included the state, the official economy of paid employment and the arenas of public
discourse. (Fraser,1992:110). In modern society, women’s influences within the public and
political spheres are still heavily influenced by the private sector and domestic issues,
encompassing changes in family legislation such as abortion and legislation against domestic
abuse.
In modern societies we can see the resilience of the changes brought about by the feminist
movements of the 19th century in the access to the public sphere with the developments of

10. inclusive mass media communications. However, institutionalized and long standing
frameworks built by a history of male dominance still in some cases renders women’s issues
as secular to the ‘private’. Where women have managed to gain access into the public and
political sphere, historical exclusion from bourgeois public spheres meant that female
ideologies are acknowledged as less sophisticated and knowledgeable than their male
counterparts. ‘Where women’s participation is acknowledged, it is commonly held to be less
sophisticated, and in many cases less authentically political than the involvements of men.’
(Siltanen & Stanworth, 1984:11).
The elite and educated feminist spheres on the nineteenth century meant that women were
able to use the platform of mass communication to voice their opinion and gain access to the
public sphere. Following the women’s movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s came the
emergence of the gender specific women’s magazines, implying a continued yet voluntary
existence of secularisation of women to the private realm. As well as incorporating political
affairs, much like the radical magazines of the women’s movement of the 70’s, current
female specific publications have created debates surrounding the domestic ‘private’ affairs
of the female and its relevance to the political public sphere. Modern fundamental debates
argue whether modern day women’s magazines constitute as a contribution to the public
sphere. Although these magazines are predominantly in relation to issues of the domestic
‘private’, they also include examples of journalism which deals explicitly with political
affairs. As well as this, some arguments raise the question of the political relevance of
women’s magazines as purveyors of ideology concerning class, family structures and
women’s role in society and its contribution to the public sphere. (Ytre-Arne, 2011:247).
In a study of women’s liberation and the advertising industry following the American
suffrage period of the 1920’s Ramsey (2006) notes that advertising campaigns selling
automobiles through women’s magazines indicated promises of the women’s liberation and

11. transference into the public sphere, while simultaneously restricting this transference by
combining the access into the public sphere with a role as a passive consumer. This limited
public access and gender limitation can also be reflected upon in the mediated representations
of women through mass media communications and the type casting of traditional female
roles. The lack of women’s presence in media institutions was proved through the negative
responses of female audiences and their inability to relate to the representations of their own
gender.
‘”We’re not really like that.” It is a complaint that can be made by any group which feels
itself to have an identity that is misrepresented by the media and is most consistently made by
those who feel themselves to have little power within media institutions and little control over
what they do.’ (Geraghty, 2000:368)
However, much like the elite bourgeois women of the nineteenth century, the modern
feminists have the accessibility through free press to conduct their own self- representation
and validation of political knowledge. ‘Women’s assiduous efforts to win and practice the
right of public access is an example of the practical ways in which the public ideal has
maintained its resilience over time, that is, through progressive incorporation of once
marginalized groups into the public sphere.’ (Ryan, 1992:285).
This chapter has summarised the resilience of the women’s movement and its success in
transforming the previously bourgeois exclusion and secularization of females in the private
sphere, into the general public sphere, drawing on evidence of modern ideals of female
influence and political power through the medium of mass media communications. The next
chapter of the essay will aim to conclude by summarising and drawing on the key points of
Habermas’ public sphere and feminist attitudes towards his argument that conceptualizes the
formation of the feminist sphere from the early eighteenth century.

12. Conclusion
Drawing on Habermas’ original works of The Public Sphere: An encyclopaedia article it’s
evident that his argument of the liberal public sphere of the early bourgeois age was much
more inclusive of subordinate classes, encompassing discursive arenas for all members of
social hierarchy, where they could debate outside of state restrictions. This was an important
concept in defining the beginning of freedom of speech and the free press, which are critical
to the emergence of the feminist sphere following the subsequent gender exclusion of the
bourgeois public sphere.
One of the most critical points in the conceptualization of feminism was the controversy and
thus criticisms of Habermas’ secondary work The structural transformation of the public
sphere. This was the catalyst to an important debate from feminists which highlights
exclusion of women in the bourgeois public sphere, otherwise left unanalysed by Habermas
himself. The two prominent feminist academics to illuminate the issue in Habermas’ work
were Fraser and Ryan, among others, who acknowledge the emergence of the counterpublic
and alternative public spheres made up of those excluded from the bourgeois. It is from these
alternative pubic spheres that came the emergence of the feminist sphere. The scholars show
that the feminist concept ran parallel to that of Habermas’ bourgeois and documents the
stuggles of the feminist sphere to break free from the secularization of the ‘private’ realm and
into the public sphere.
The Civil War and the woman’s movement reinforced feminism during the nineteenth
century to a degree that led to the eventual inclusion of the female private into the public and
political spheres. Post-modernism and the female accessibility into the public sphere is still
relevant in modern society and within the realms of mass media communication.

13. By using a collaboration of Habermas’ socio-politically acclaimed concept of the public
sphere and the feminist criticisms, a contextualization of the emergence of feminism as we
know it in modern society is established.
.