It's a yellowed sheet of paper, with the following handwritten in the top right-hand corner: "Le Monde Decber 44." Found in Hubert Beuve-Méry's archives, the first organizational chart bears the scars of war: Some surnames are followed by the words "prisoner," others by "deported to Germany." There is a Raymond, an André, a Maurice, an Edmond, an Emile, a Charles and a Robert, but not a single female first name, or almost not: In this list of 33 names, the novelist Germaine Beaumont, the first woman to receive the Prix Renaudot (1930) for her writing, is the only representative of what was not yet called the "second sex."
After two articles, one in December 1944 on France's "history still hot with blood and red with glory," the other in January 1945 on the "smoke-free landscape" of a winter without heating, the writer's byline disappeared from the newspaper's columns. In the years following the publication of the first copy of Le Monde on December 18, 1944, the evening daily had no female journalists on its payroll, said historian Patrick Eveno, author of a 2004 book on the history of Le Monde. The Paris editorial office was populated exclusively by male figures.
At the time, the newspaper was located near the Opéra, in a building constructed at the turn of the century by Le Temps, a daily that was scuttled in 1942. Photographs from these pioneering years bring a vanished world back to life: Behind the huge blue earthenware clock on the façade, journalists in suits and ties, cigarettes in hand, wrote their articles at desks equipped with inkwells. In the dark maze of corridors, errand runners hurried along when they heard the bell: In the great tradition of the pre-war press, they wore blue, then grey uniforms, with a gilded "M" in Gothic lettering on the collar.
A disconcerting presence
In the early 1950s, it was in this uncomfortable, faded setting that Le Monde's journalists produced their austere, photo-free newspaper, printed on the presses that had been installed in the basement in 1911. On the second floor, director Hubert Beuve-Méry reigned over a huge office that hugged the corner of Rue des Italiens and Rue Taitbout. "He shared this space with his assistant, Yolande Boitard, who had a cigarette holder," said Anne-Marie Franchet, Pierre Viansson-Ponté's assistant. "She herself had a secretary, as she didn't type."
It was in this dark, intimidating office that "Beuve" welcomed new recruits – mainly men. Among the 51 journalists who signed a petition on the paper's independence in 1951, there was only one female editor, Christine de Rivoyre. "When I arrived in 1964, there were women among the stenographers, secretaries, proofreaders, in the nurse's office, the personnel department and the cafeteria but very few in the editorial department," said Franchet. The presence of female editors was so unusual that, until 1957, Jacqueline Piatier's literary reviews were signed "J. Piatier" – her colleague at the politics desk Raymond Barrillon thought the J stood for Jérôme.
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