Women have played a vital role in American journalism
since the colonial period, though their numbers and influence were limited by a combination of economic, legal,
and social factors until the mid-twentieth century. After
the late 1960s, increased educational opportunities, social
and cultural changes brought about by the women’s movement, and the advent of equal opportunity legislation led
to greater participation of women in the journalistic workforce. Their numbers increased, some won highly visible
assignments covering political and international news or as
television anchors and correspondents, and others finally
broke through the “glass ceiling” to hold positions as editors, publishers, and board members at a handful of media
companies. These gains slowed in the 1990s, however, and
by 2007, women journalists were still a minority in the
newsroom and boardroom and their salaries continued to
lag behind those of their male counterparts. This disparity
and women’s under representation in the news workforce
continue to be points of concern today for educational
groups, media corporations, feminists, and critics, who
view women’s equal participation in the news industry as a
democratic imperative as well as an assurance for the future
of the industry itself.
The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
The first newspaper publishers in America were printers
who produced a variety of materials, including pamphlets,
religious tracts, official documents, and public notices in
addition to weekly four-page newspapers. These printers,
almost always male, were sanctioned by the colonial government and often held official printing contracts. They
were assisted by male journeymen and apprentices and,
informally, their wives and daughters. When a printer died
or became incapacitated, it was often his wife or widow
who carried on the business until her male children were
old enough to take legal possession. Women were rarely
recognized for their contributions during this time, however; their official role was to serve as wife and mother.
They had no legal rights, little formal education, and no
formalized training in the trades. Their role as printer was
often obscured by the fact that their name rarely appeared
on the newspaper or in official records as publisher.
Despite this, historians have identified at least sixteen
women who published newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets
during the colonial and revolutionary periods. The first of
these was Catherine Anna Zenger, who, for nine months
in 1734, published the New York Weekly Journal for her
husband, Peter, who was imprisoned and awaiting trial for
seditious libel. When he died in 1746, she continued publishing the paper and running the print shop until she turned
it over to her oldest son and the legal heir in 1749. Elizabeth
Timothy published the South-Carolina Gazette from 1739
until 1746, following the death of her husband, Louis. During these years, the Gazette served as an important source
of information for the growing Charleston community. The
mother of six children, Elizabeth Timothy kept the business
going until her oldest son and the official heir, Peter, turned
twenty-one.
During the revolutionary period, Mary Katherine Goddard and her mother, Sarah Updike Goddard, ran the Maryland Journal for Mary’s brother, William, from 1773 to
1784 while he traveled around the colonies seeking business opportunities. Mary Goddard made the Baltimore
paper one of the most vigorous voices of the growing rebellion against colonial rule and in 1777 was selected by the
Continental Congress to issue the first official publication
of the Declaration of Independence. She made the Journal
one of the best newspapers in the colonies, but was removed
as publisher by William when he resumed control of the
paper in 1784. There were also other women involved in journalism during this period. Mary Crouch, who was
strongly opposed to the Stamp Act of 1765, published The
Charleston Gazette in South Carolina until about 1780, and
then moved the paper to Salem, Massachusetts, where it
continued for several years.
In the years following the Revolution, women continued
to take up the business of printing and newspaper publishing
upon the death or absence of husbands, fathers, and brothers. While most of them ran the business for fewer than
two years, a few did so for nearly a decade. Ann Barber of
the Newport Mercury published her paper from 1800–1809;
Sarah Hillhouse published the Monitor in Washington,
Georgia, from 1803 to 1811; and Catherine Bose Dobbin
published the Baltimore American from 1811–1820. In sum,
thirty-two women acted as newspaper publishers from the
colonial period until 1820.
The Early Nineteenth Century
After the 1830s, when city newspapers began to print daily
editions and hire regular correspondents and reporters, a
few women made their name as staff writers or regular correspondents. Others established themselves as editors of
women’s magazines or even established their own publications. These were the exceptions, however, for most women
publishing in newspapers and magazines did so on an ad
hoc basis. They contributed letters, poems, stories, and
observations, were paid by the published word, and rarely
set foot in a publishing office.
One of the earliest women to make a name for herself
in nineteenth-century journalism was Anne Royall, who
became known for her eccentricity, political acumen, and
devotion to democratic government. Widowed and destitute, she moved to Washington in 1831 at the age of 61,
and began to publish Paul Pry, the first of two political
newspapers. She published this until 1836, then launched
a second newspaper, The Huntress, which continued until
shortly before her death in 1854. Critical and outspoken,
she exposed graft and corruption, campaigned for internal
improvements, free schools, and free thought and speech.
Another original was the feminist Margaret Fuller, who had
established herself as the editor of the Dial, a transcendentalist journal. In 1844 she was hired by Horace Greeley to
be the literary critic for his New York Tribune, but she also
wrote exposés on public institutions and women’s rights.
Because it was not socially acceptable for a middle-class
woman to work in the public eye, Fuller worked from a
room in Greeley’s home and sent her material to the Tribune by messenger.
Some women journalists used their positions to critique
social conventions while at the same time paying lip service
to those that required them to conform to the prevailing
ideal of “the lady.” Sarah Josepha Hale edited the popular
Godey’s Lady’s Book from 1837 until 1877, publishing the
expected articles on home, family, food, and fashion. But at
the same time, she critiqued the very fashions she featured,
promoted women’s education, and advocated that widowed
or unmarried women be able to support themselves. Sarah
Willis Parton, who wrote under the pen name “Fanny Fern”
for the weekly New York Ledger from 1853 until 1872, was
appreciated by both male and female readers for her wry
wit as well as her direct language, despite the fact that she
dealt with many potentially sensitive topics such as woman
suffrage, dress reform, prostitution, and poverty. Jane Cunningham Croly (“Jennie June”), who began her forty-year
newspaper career at the New York Herald in 1855, used
her fashion, society, and women’s columns to promote the
expansion of woman’s sphere to include civic activism and
improvement.
Post-Civil War Years
Following the Civil War, women slowly made gains in the
public sphere, partly because of their earlier involvement
in the abolition movement, partly because of the growing woman’s movement. This was reflected in journalism,
where the numbers of women increased and the roles they
played widened, despite rules and restrictions that favored
male journalists. A small number of women ventured into
the world of political journalism, including Mary Clemmer Ames, who covered Congress from 1866 to 1884 for
the New York Independent and the Brooklyn Daily Union,
and Sarah Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”), who published columns in the New York Times from 1873 to 1878
that attacked corruption in Washington, supported women
government workers, and condemned the return of white
supremacy in the South. By 1879, twenty women were covering Congress as weekly columnists, but in that year, a
Capitol rules change barred them from the press galleries
on the grounds that only the main representatives of daily
papers (all of whom were male) were to be allowed.
As advertisers, whose influence in journalism increased
substantially during the late nineteenth century, began to
value the importance of women consumers, newspapers
established women’s columns, pages, and sections in an
effort to attract these readers. These pages required women
writers and editors, and by the early 1880s, many of the
larger city newspapers had at least one woman on staff. In
that year, the U.S. Census counted 288 women—less than
3 percent of all working journalists—as full-time journalists, while perhaps three times that number were part-time
correspondents and contributors While the majority of these
wrote about affairs of the domestic sphere (family, food, and
children) or society (weddings, births, and gossip), some
used these pages to comment on social ills and promote civic
reform. Some who became leaders in the growing woman’s
movement served as catalysts for change. Sallie Joy White,
who became the first woman staff reporter on a Boston newspaper in 1870, eventually wrote a popular column under the
pen name “Penelope Penfeather,” and continued writing for
Boston papers until her death in 1909. She was a suffragist,
promoted women’s education and their place in the professions, and in 1885 helped found the New England Woman’s
Press Association (NEWPA). Helen M. Winslow was a staff
writer at the Boston Advertiser from 1883 to 1890 and the
Boston Herald in 1891, the fashion editor at Delineator for seventeen years, and the founder and editor of Clubwoman,
the publication of the General Federation of Women’s
Clubs. She was an officer in NEWPA as well as several others women’s organizations and regularly used her columns
to promote women’s interests, especially suffrage.
Other women entered the field of journalism through
their advocacy for a particular reform. The woman suffrage
movement, for example, published more than thirty journals between 1849 and 1920. Though most of these were
short-lived, each provided an opportunity for women to
edit and write for their own publication which was dedicated to their own needs and interests. In 1870, for example,
Victoria (Claflin) and Tennessee Claflin ran Woodhull and
Clafl in’s Weekly, a paper that supported woman suffrage
and free love, and in 1872, published an English translation of the Communist Manifesto. The paper also helped to
cause a national scandal when it carried rumors an affair
between the wife of journalist Theodore Tilton and Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher. Another example was the feminist
Lucy Stone who became the founding editor of the longestlived suffrage publication, the Woman’s Journal (1870–
1917). Upon her death in 1893, she was succeeded by her
daughter, Elizabeth Stone Blackwell, who had grown up in
the Journal offices and the suffrage movement.
The temperance movement also provided women an
opportunity to enter journalism. In 1883, the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union established the Union Signal.
This national weekly, which focused primarily on temperance and prohibition, came to follow the dictum of WCTU
leader Frances Willard to “do everything” and eventually
promoted a slew of reforms, including woman suffrage,
welfare reform, women’s labor issues, health reform, and
pacifism. By 1911, the WCTU claimed nearly a quartermillion members and the Union Signal, filled with articles
by staff writers, contributors, and movement leaders, likely
had triple that number of readers.
A third reform movement of the period was launched
almost single-handedly by one woman journalist, Ida B.
Wells, the African American editor of the Memphis Free
Speech. She gained notoriety in 1892 when she began writing editorials against lynching, her life was threatened, and
her newspaper office was burned. Wells moved to the North
where she continued her anti-lynching campaign on the
staff of the black publication, New York Age. She founded
anti-lynching societies, lectured throughout the United
States and England, published several books, and continued
to write for several newspapers until her death in 1931.
Front-Page Women
By the last decades of the nineteenth century, newspapers
had adopted modern-day news values that identify “news”
as events of significance, usually involving change and conflict, and affecting significant portions of the population. At
the same time, there was a growing taste for “human-interest” stories that emphasized the triumphs and tragedies of
the human condition. While women at this time were typically deemed physically and psychologically unfit to enter
into the helter-skelter world of breaking news (politics, war,
crime, and disaster), they were considered ideal for some
of the human-interest stories that required a sympathetic
approach and a compassionate tone. These stories allowed
women to break out of the women’s pages and a few even
made it onto the front page where the most important stories appeared. Because it was still considered a novelty for
women to work for newspapers, the editors often publicized
the fact by attaching the woman’s byline to the story, something that was newsworthy in itself at that time.
The most famous of these front-page women was Elizabeth Cochrane (“Nellie Bly”), who won a reputation as a
stunt reporter in 1887 after she got herself committed to
a insane asylum and then reported her story in lurid detail
for the New York World. Her most renowned stunt was her
1889 trip around the world in seventy-two days, but she also
wrote about social issues, including labor strikes, the living
conditions of workers, gambling, and prostitution. Wisconsin reporter Zona Gale also enjoyed front-page exposure with
her stories in the Milwaukee Journal in 1900 and eventually
worked her way to New York, where she landed a job with
the Evening World. Here she used her considerable personal
charms to win the confidence of witnesses in murder trials,
striking mill workers, and champion boxers before launching a highly successful career as a playwright and novelist.
During World War I, though women journalists were banned
by the military authorities from the front lines, a few managed to circumvent regulations to cover the war effort. Rheta
Childe Dorr, for example, followed the women’s “Battalion of
Death” in Russia and later gained access to training camps in
France by joining the staff of the YMCA.
The success of the woman suffrage amendment in 1919,
the end of World War I, and the ensuing optimism of the
Jazz Age encouraged women to enter the work force and
the number of women reporters doubled between 1920 and
1930. Some entered the emerging fields of radio, advertising, and public relations, but most of those in print journalism continued to work for the women’s pages and women’s
magazines. Despite their recently won political equality,
they were still restricted by quotas in both the newsroom
and the journalism schools that had opened during the
first decades of the twentieth century, and most male press
clubs remained closed to them. Those who succeeded in
establishing and maintaining a career were single-minded
and determined. One particularly successful woman was
Dorothy Thompson, a newspaper columnist who achieved
celebrity status for her coverage of the European political
scene during the 1930s and 1940s. She was an early critic
of Adolph Hitler and was expelled from Germany in 1934
because of her unflattering portrait of the dictator. Back in
the United States, she toured the country to lecture on the
dangers posed by Hitler and his Nazi party. From 1936 to
1958 she published a political column three times a week,
“On the Record,” first for the New York Herald-Tribune and
later for other papers.
With the beginning of World War II, as male reporters
and editors were drafted into the military, news organizations were forced to fill their places with women. More than one hundred received accreditation from the War Department, though they still faced antagonism from military
authorities and male reporters and were generally restricted
from the front lines. A few, including Marguerite Higgins
of the New York Herald-Tribune and Life photographer
Margaret Bourke-White, won recognition for their extraordinary work and continued in high-profile careers. Once
the war ended and men returned from the military to claim
their old positions, however, most of the women who had
filled editorial and news assignments were moved back to
the women’s pages or fired.
They eventually found new opportunities during the
post-war economic boom, when many newspapers took
advantage of the developing consumer-driven economy by
transforming their traditional women’s pages into expanded
“home” and “lifestyle” sections. Here, women journalists
wrote about the latest domestic technology and trends in
homemaking and child rearing. Just as they had in the
1890s, some used the women’s pages to talk about serious
social issues and, eventually the rising women’s liberation
movement. Others found work with the growing number of
women’s magazines, which also took advantage of the economic boom. Women seeking jobs in the news department,
the wire services, radio, and the emerging television news
industry, however, were turned down by managers who
explained they needed someone they could send anywhere,
who were more likely to have accessibility to male sources,
who would not have family and childcare issues interfering
with her work, who would be tough and reliable, and who
would fit into the (male) newsroom.
The Women’s Movement and Later
Women finally received a weapon to use against job discrimination with the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the establishment of the federal Equal Economic Opportunities Commission (EEOC). They began to
organize across the country and in the next decade filed
successful complaints with the EEOC against news organizations, including the Associated Press, the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and NBC. At the same time,
feminist groups organized public demonstrations, boycotts,
and sit-ins to protest the media’s failure to adequately represent women and their interests as well as their sexist representation and misrepresentaton of women in news and
advertising. Women journalists wrote about these events in
radical new feminist publications such as Ms. as well as in
some of the traditional women’s magazines, including Redbook and Cosmopolitan.
The lawsuits, court rulings, and publicity drove news
organizations to improve their hiring and promotion of
women journalists and to expand their news sections to
include what had been traditionally relegated to the women’s
pages as merely “women’s issues.” Opportunities increased
dramatically for women in the next two decades. Quotas
were dropped by journalism schools and by 1985 female students had begun to outnumber male students (though male
professors continue even today to outnumber and outrank
female professors). The number of women in the journalism
workforce grew steadily to 30 percent in 1970, 40 percent
in 1980 and 48 percent in 2001. They were hired to cover
the entire gamut of news, including sports, crime, politics,
and war, although “hard news” continued to be dominated
by male reporters. Some women journalists were promoted
to editorial positions, but here growth was slow and by
1985, fewer than 12 percent of editors were women. Women
even made it into the publisher’s office and the boardroom.
Companies such as Gannett and Lee Enterprises were the
most receptive in this regard. The television news industry
also gradually opened its doors to women journalists and
increasingly hired them as reporters, although usually not
on the political beat. By the late 1980s, most local television stations had a man-woman anchor team. Some women
enjoyed stints as anchorwomen on national television news
including Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Leslie Stahl, and
Elizabeth Vargas. In 2006, Katie Couric, a former co-host
for NBC’s Today Show, became the evening anchor of CBS
Evening News, a position formerly occupied by such male
newscasters as Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite, Dan
Rather, and Bob Schieffer.
Despite such gains, the trend toward hiring more women
journalists slowed during the mid-1990s, and by 2001, had
come to a halt. The percentage of women in the journalistic
workforce began to drop for the first time in 150 years and
they remained significantly underrepresented in management positions where news decisions are made and corporate policy was formed. As in all professions, they continued
to be paid less than their male counterparts, just eighty-one
cents to the dollar, according to a study published in 2003.
Surveys showed that they shared the same professional
values as their male counterparts, but were less likely to
seek management positions. They were less likely to plan
on staying in the field for the rest of their professional lives,
perhaps because of the difficulties they faced in advancing,
perhaps because of the eventual demands of motherhood
and family. By 2005, women held just 27 percent of management positions and their numbers had decreased to 43
percent of the journalistic workforce. These statistics were
troubling for those who believed women must take an equal
part in the news industry to represent a realistic and balanced view of the world and to ensure the very future of the
news industry.
Further Reading
Beasley, Maurine H., and Sheila J. Gibbons. Taking Their Place:
A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, 2nd ed.
State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc., 2003.
Belford, Barbara. Brilliant Bylines: A Biographical Anthology of
Notable Newspaperwomen in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Burt, Elizabeth V., ed. Women’s Press Organizations: 1881–1999.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Creedon, Pamela J., ed. Women in Mass Communication, 3rd ed.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.
Edwards, Julia. Women of the World: The Great Foreign Correspondents. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Endres, Kathleen L., and Therese L. Lueck, eds. Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Henry, Susan. “Exception to the Female Model: Colonial Printer
Mary Crouch.” Journalism Quarterly, 62 (1985):725–733,
749.
Marzolf, Marion. Up From the Footnote: A History of Women
Journalists. New York: Hastings House, 1977.
Schlipp, Madelon Golden, and Sharon M. Murphy. Great Women
of the Press. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1983.
Signorielli, Nancy, ed. Women in Communication: A Biographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Elizabeth V. Burt