Progression Of Women In 20th Century Journalism

Progression of Women In 20th Century Journalism

Before World War II, the amounts of female journalists in the business were mere hundreds. They were there, but extremely minimal and the working conditions were pitiful. Although they did have jobs working as journalists, they were normally only allowed to write about ‘female topics’ such as cooking, child rearing, and domestic subjects. Women formed the National Press Club in 1919 to, in a way, compete with the men’s National Press Club, which closed its doors to women. About a year later the 19th amendment was ratified, allowing women to vote. The 19th amendment gave women some confidence, to then create woman’s suffrage groups. Nineteen years later, in 1939, began World War II, where woman

Before World War II, Lange worked as a professional studio photographer and did not realize how unhappy she was until she was looking out the window of her home at a homeless man, and saw how he had nothing. Subsequently, she photographed the man, and many others at a place called the Riff Raff, where a friend said the photographs would be valuable. Magazines bought her photographs, which then found government worker, Paul Taylor, who asked for more, which began her career as a Great Depression photographer. Lange, described as “ragged, hungry, and broke”, whose photographs captured the racial and sexual discrimination and grief that women endured of which she was appalled by; but her photographs also captured a dignity, courage, and power of sorts, though it was nonexistent. During her time documenting the Great Depression, she photographed many Japanese neighborhoods, processing centers, and facilities after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Although Lange’s work was research and now government documentary of the Great Depression, her photographs were censored and often removed from articles by the federal government, for showing things that the government didn’t want

Women were expected to document on “women topics”, verbally and physically belittled, and un-prioritized. Due to the courage built up over the duration of World War II, a cluster of class action lawsuits were filed against newspapers and magazines over the 1970’s. Though there were many filed, the light shone primarily on two; one against New York Times, and the other against Newsweek. Boylan et al v. New York Times, (often referred to in Pulitzer prize winner, Nan Robertson’s book, The Girls in the Balcony) was filed by nine women, on behalf of 550 women, who believed it was unfair as male’s were paid $59 more a week than. Lynn Povich, who’d been sexually assaulted by an editor at Newsweek, filed the lawsuit against Newsweek with forty-six other women. Povich attempted to contact her boss about the issue of her male colleagues getting 43 out of 49 headlines in the year, the response came back saying that what she had said was a "Conspiracy theory" and that her boss "Does not plan to address the issue again". Both lawsuits won, which began a new era for women in journalism. The final straw pulled for women, was when the previously “men’s-only” National Press Club opened its doors to women in 1971, and since then 70-76% of all journalism and mass communications graduates have been