Women & Journalism

Every gain women have made in the past two hundred years has been in the face of experts insisting they couldn’t do it and didn’t really want to.
--Katha Pollitt, 2005

The contribution of women to the field of journalism has a rich history in the United States. In the earliest days of women journalists, their writing assignments were often confined to specific topics: how-to articles to inform women of the nation about “true womanhood.” This was defined as being proficient in the sphere of domestic duties such as cooking and cleaning, raising children, being pure and chaste, and enforcing the idea that a real American woman was submissive and feminine, above all else. This view began to change in the 1800s as women started to use their writing to effect social change and encourage a new kind of American woman: one that is equal to men. Throughout the 20th, and now the 21st, century, great strides continue to be made by women as they employ journalism to inform the nation, and to break the historical mold of their professional identity.

As early as the 1800s, Sarah Josepha Hale’s American Ladies’ Magazine appeared for sale. While men needed to be assured that publications like this were being used to develop the ideal American woman, as opposed to being a vehicle for social change. However, while Hale assuaged the men of the time with her promise of writing about topics of “true womanhood,” the prevailing value system of middle and upper middle class women in the 19th century—she was, quite cleverly, using her magazine’s articles as a force to help expand the breadth of women’s activities. Throughout her articles, she often made the argument that women can, and should, strive to hold careers as social workers, teachers, nurses, doctors. Hale also made sure to employ women as the authors of her magazine’s articles.

By the mid to late 1800s, more women were using their writings to directly effect social change. Abigail Scott Duniway was one such woman. Often referred to as Oregon’s “Mother of equal suffrage,” Duniway used social reform and suffrage as her call to arms, through her newspaper, The New Northwest, a weekly periodical, from 1871-1887. The paper’s motto was Free Speech, Free Press, Free People. Following in the wake of her success with The New Northwest,Duniway wrote for, and edited, two other journals: The Coming Century and The Pacific Empire. Like Hale, Duniway actively published female writers in her newspapers. She used her writings as a tool to fight social injustices, and focused on issues of “the legal status of women, the treatment of the Chinese, policies related to American Indians, and the limits of Temperance and Prohibition.” Duniway’s had an apt comparison between the sexes in journalism through her brother, Harvey Scott, the chief editor and part owner of The Oregonian. Duniway’s sentiments are best summarized in her quote, “If we had been a man, we’d have had an editor’s position and handsome salary at twenty-one.” Duniway is honored on the Walk of the Heroines for the great strides she helped make towards liberty for all.

As time progressed, more women used journalism to inform citizens of social injustices and to help shape public opinion. Throughout the early 1900s, Beatrice Morrow Cannady was one of those women. Cannady was the assistant editor to her husband, Edward, for the newspaper The Advocate, published in Portland, Oregon. She used her position with the newspaper to confront issues of race and segregation in Oregon, and to emphasize that an important tool for solving the problem of race relations was interpersonal contact. Cannady believed that racial discrimination occurred, in part, because white people did not know African Americans as people with ambition, with hopes, feelings, and aspirations. The Advocate was the right place for her to share, “information about African American culture, music, poetry, and history with white audiences… to challenge stereotypes and correct misconceptions,” according to Cannady’s biographer Dr. Kimberly Mangun. To promote interpersonal contact to resolve race relations, Cannady held elaborate tea parties at her home, where guests included people from many races and ethnic groups. The tea parties, in Cannady’s words, helped to “lift the veil of mystery surrounding each race.” Beatrice Morrow Cannady’s efforts as editor for The Advocate, and as a civil right advocate, make her an essential voice in the fabric of women’s contributions to Oregon history.

Other influential Oregon women have used journalism for social change: Kathryn Bogle and Bobbie Dore Foster. Bogle’s famous 1937 article, “An American Negro Speaks of Color,” published in the Oregonian, helped put the spotlight on the difficulties endured by black people living in Oregon. Through descriptions of her personal experiences as a young black girl growing up in Oregon, she focused on schooling and the education system, but also explored the difficulties finding employment. Often referred to as a “spokeswoman for her race,” Bogle’s article gave readers a first hand account of the Black experience in Oregon during the early 20th century. Bogle’s article came at an especially important time for the Black community of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, as The Advocate had ceased publication a few years earlier. Throughout the article, Bogle recounts the many schools she attended as a child, and how often she was the only black child in the school. Bogle spoke of how she “was left severely alone at recess time and the noon hour,” but that over time, other students found that she “was like any other little girl with hopes and dreams” and that her “color did not rub off on them when they took” her hand. Bogle took a stand by confronting the state’s largest newspaper, noting the Oregonian’s decision to keep news of black people at a minimum in their newspaper. In her words, “I just felt that in the daily news, there should be something about black people. The only thing that was ever in there was the occasional burglary or theft of some kind.”

Bobbie Dore Foster is the most contemporary example of women in journalism, as she is still making her place in Oregon’s journalistic landscape. Foster helped found The Skanner in 1975, with a mission of “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now.”, While there were challenges, mostly financial, Foster says that the primary goal was and still is to educate people. In a 2014 interview she shared that “We were interested in reporting the news, the good and the bad. It took awhile for people to learn that we were not afraid to take on difficult issues, and we were proud to be a voice for and of the community.” Foster continues to serve as executive editor to the newspaper, which is co-owned with her husband, and has said that for her The Skanner is a conduit for important information, and as editor “I try to format it in a way that increases understanding of both the information and underlying issues.” Foster’s desire to write stemmed from her childhood, where she attended a segregated school in Southwest Louisiana, and she had the idea to someday share her experience with others through the medium. Like most women who sought out journalism as a professional career, Foster had to contend with sexism. She explained that: “disrespect from men because of my gender was a regular experience.” Two of Dore Foster’s inspirations and mentors were Kathryn Hall Bogle, and Gladys McCoy.

There has always been a dearth of women in the field of journalism. Maureen Dowd, OP-ED columnist for The New York Times, suggests this is possibly due to the issue that men “don’t appreciate being lectured by a woman.” She was even called “another hectoring wife” when she wrote about President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal. Historically speaking, women were often allowed to break into the world of writing if they were using it to reinforce those womanly traits men found most desirable. Despite the criticisms of male colleagues and readers throughout the years, however, there were, still are, and will be, women who will use journalism as a vehicle for change and a way to increase understanding. To quote Bobbie Dore Foster, “women have shown they can go head to head with any male journalist, and come out with a front page story.”

Author: Patrick Maloney, Monumental Women Senior Capstone, Winter 2014

Women & Journalism

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