The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the PressChapter 1
by Martha Allen
Chapter 1: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATION NETWORKS AMONG WOMEN
Introduction
Networking by women in the United States is not a new phenomenon. Since, and even prior to, the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, women have developed various means of communication through which to work to improve the female condition. Throughout history women have often communicated systematically not only by person-to-person methods, including organizations and conventions, but also by publishing periodicals and books. Men, and organizations that included men, played a key role in financing many of the early women’s rights papers.
By contrast, women today are financing most of the periodicals of the current women’s movement themselves, producing a press essentially independent of male influence. Another distinctive feature is the variety of media forms that they are using. Women totally or primarily own and operate media in print, broadcast, film, video, and music. The most remarkable difference from all past efforts of women to build communication networks comes from the breadth and depth of today’s communication among women. Instead of originating with a single class of women, as in the past, today’s periodicals arise from women in all walks of life and economic levels.
Forging these extensive multi-media networks during the two decades, 1963 to 1983, not only held together women of common interests and backgrounds, but created networks between women of diverse interests and cultures. Women of various ethnic backgrounds; women in service work and the trades; disabled women; women concerned with international issues, economic issues and issues of sexuality, health and safety — these and others shared experiences and perspectives among themselves and then with other women. Working together in this way, they produced vibrant and growing communication networks.
This study analyzes media that is primarily run by women, for women, and about women. “Primarily” in this case means the media need not be 100% women-run, although most are. According to this definition, as long as women are clearly making the decisions, and the limited male involvement does not indicate any control of the direction, then it is still considered women’s media. Some media begun by married women, for instance, had support from male family members, but where these men were not involved in decision-making on the content, the media are defined as “women’s media”. Occasionally media allowed a few males on their staffs but not in positions of power. Such limited male involvement also did not prevent the media from being considered women’s media. Institutionally-owned media, such as universities, or churches, were evaluated, necessarily subjectively, on the extent to which there seemed to be autonomy and woman-control of the media.
This is a study of women’s media, not “feminist” media. While some may consider the terms synonymous, or at least interchangeable, women’s media and feminist media are not the same. The term “feminist” often includes men. Some men call themselves feminist and are considered by women to be feminist. What is historically unique about this contemporary development of media, besides its extensiveness, is that it is almost totally independent of men, as will be made apparent in Chapters 3-7. A study of “feminist” media, therefore, would necessarily be for another purpose than the one being undertaken here.
Furthermore, the term “feminist” has no firm definition, and while I could use a dictionary definition, or make my own, it would be pointless if the women involved in media differ. Women do disagree about the term. Some women define “feminist” narrowly. Others say all women are feminists and point to the number who did not call themselves “feminist” yesterday but events or experience made them so today. They note the potential to be “feminist” is there in all women. While one could let each women’s media themselves decide if they consider themselves feminist, many do not say. The term is often avoided because of the bad connotations mass media have given the word to the general public. The term “women’s media,” in contrast, is all-encompassing and can be more logically equated with the equally comprehensive term “women’s movement” than can the term “feminist media.”
My criterion for selecting periodicals was their ownership, not their content. Only after selecting all women-owned media did I check content to see whether they were also operated by, for and about women. I used women’s own statements, where such statements appeared, on whether they were “for and about” women. And I also examined the content. Some periodicals said they hoped many men would read their issues, but these periodicals did not publish their periodical for male readership.
This “for and about” part of the criterion, of course, raises the question of whether a women-owned periodical opposed to issues commonly considered a part of the women’s movement would be included in my study of women’s media. The answer is yes; I included any media owned by women, which is by, for and about women, are included. Women do not agree 100% on all issues of the women’s movement. There are women who are vitally involved in the women’s movement, for example, who are opposed to abortion. Woman to Woman, edited by Dr. Linda Parks, who identified herself as a lesbian feminist, was a champion of women in prison, regularly exposing bad prison conditions, yet she editorialized that abortion was murder. During the time period of this study, 1963-1983, many women changed their positions on the Equal Rights Amendment, having earlier been convinced that protective laws for women were hard-won benefits necessary for working women. Some women would abolish the family while others work to strengthen it. The issue of separatism, of working independently of men or with men, continues to be an issue upon which women will find no agreement.
But what if the media not only did not conform to commonly held positions on a few issues but outspokenly opposed the women’s movement itself? Again, the answer is to evaluate whether it conforms to the criterion of ownership and operation primarily by, for and about women. In reality I did not find any such papers. Phyllis Schlafly’s Report, part of her Eagle Forum, might have been thought to fall in this category. I examined 56 issues over a six year period 1976-1981 (and one in 1973). This careful study revealed that it did not conform to the criterion. It is the publication of an organization of, and financed by, both men and women. The issues it covers run a wide range of foreign and U.S. domestic policy with women’s issues in the minority. Less than half of the articles were on or in any way related to women, as, for example, “How the Libs and the Feds Plan to Spend Your Money,” compared with typical foreign policy articles such as, “Cuddling Up to Caribbean Communists” or “Don’t Surrender the U.S. Canal!” Being edited by a woman is not enough to fit the criterion.
My methodology required first setting up the parameters for my study, realistically assessing what was possible to undertake in one dissertation. As will be seen, each form of women’s media could be an entire dissertation study in itself. Therefore, it appeared wiser to save extensive discussion of some forms of women’s media for a future study. Although extremely important, women’s communication through organizations, conferences, demonstrations and theater could not be covered in detail in this study. Emphasis has not been placed on the person-to-person forms of communication, despite their vital role in the women’s movement. The more formalized forms of women’s media, print, broadcast, film, video, and music, were chosen because they provided more tangible networks, indicated greater levels of organized effort, and were more measurable, more extensive, and in many ways more lasting.
To select my periodicals I went to major library collections of women’s media and special and individual collections, to several published lists, and to any source that might include women’s media. (See appendix.) A periodical is any print medium that appears, or is intended to appear, at intervals. It includes newspapers, magazines, newsletters, bulletins, and regular reports; all of these kinds of periodicals were within the scope of my study.
I then applied my women’s media definition to each periodical by examining the periodical itself. Some which appeared at first to qualify were found upon my examination not to fit one or more parts of the criterion: primarily owned and operated by, for and about women. For example, Anima, which provides “Crucial new ideas in feminism, psychology and religion, [and] concentrates on the quest for wholeness through values traditionally labeled ‘feminist,'” is co-edited by a man and a woman for men and women. This was also true of many periodicals using the word “feminist” in the title or subtitle. All of the traditional women’s magazines are known to be male owned, such as Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and Seventeen. I checked the ambiguous media, despite indications that they might not be women’s media, in order to see if that was indeed the case. My final selection for examination totaled 1,380 periodicals that were women owned and run by, for and about women. Of these I reviewed approximately 500 periodicals.
After arranging my initial list of 1380 periodicals alphabetically and chronologically, I began examining the range in order to have a representative spread — both large and small, both well-known and little known, both short and long-lived. Some women’s media became “well-known” because the activists working on them attended conferences and consciously networked. Others became well-known because the issues with which they concerned themselves caught the attention of women as being particularly relevant to their lives. It was not possible to examine every issue of all of the selected periodicals. Some could not be located. I carefully examined as many as I could find particularly the early and pioneering women’s media.
In examining approximately 500 women’s periodicals, I learned first that they were of certain types and that these categories into which they naturally fell were of great significance to my overall analysis. Indeed, these categories form the basis of my chapter organization. These categories were: general or multi-issue periodicals (chapters 3 and 4), single issue periodicals (chapter 5), and special identity periodicals — those coming from a particular perspective (chapter 6). A fourth category encompassed other, non-periodical forms of women’s media (chapter 7), such as news services, book publishing, distribution, radio, television, cable television, video, film, and music. I located these sources through archives, printed lists, and references to them found in the periodicals examined.
I surveyed enough copies of each periodical to come to a firm conclusion as to its purpose, approach, characteristics and content. Once having determined this, I thereafter skimmed the issues to spot divergence from the pattern, noting any particular developments, including changes over time, and reading those issues fully. I compiled information on hundreds of other periodicals that were not available for examination in order to more thoroughly understand the extent and character of the development of print networks among women.
At this point I began my intensive study and analysis of the content and substance of the growing networks, looking particularly for consistent threads running through all the types of the women’s media that I was now examining in depth. Out of this intensive and exhaustive examination and continuing evaluation, I found eight characteristics of women’s media. These eight characteristics appeared in all types and all forms of media. They were the qualities that all these women’s media held in common. Because of their singular importance, I have discussed them as they arose in the various media networks.
Chapter Summaries
In addition to describing my methodology and defining terms, chapter one relates the long-recognized need for communication networks of women and others such as black Americans, to the structure, theory, and reality of mainstream mass media. It provides a short overview of the origin and development of the nation’s communication system and briefly discusses the effects of women’s reliance on mass media as for their communications forum.
Chapter two focuses on the 1960’s when women began speaking out again in increasing numbers against discrimination and for women’s rights, peace and justice issues. It describes women’s attempts to use both alternative media and mass media, and finally, when nothing else worked, their own media, which they had to create to fill each new need for communication.
The third and fourth chapters study the multi-issue women’s periodicals, showing the development of the pioneering papers, and analyzing the eight distinctive characteristics of women’s media that became apparent under intensive comparative examination.
Chapter five covers single-issue periodicals. The single-issue periodicals have a particular focus, such as health or economics, and usually do not try to cover other issues in depth, except as they relate to the primary focus.
Chapter six looks at the special identity women’s periodicals. Special identity periodicals are those coming from women who share unique perspectives — such as the periodicals of black and ethnic women, religious women, and lesbian women. These women have a particular focus and perspective, even when their periodicals were also sometimes covering other issues.
Chapter seven looks beyond periodicals to other forms of communication, such as presses and publishers, news services, film, broadcast, video, cable, and music groups. I applied the same criterion applied to periodicals to these other forms of women’s media. To qualify, the media group needed to be primarily by, for and about women. Information on the various forms of women’s media came predominantly from women’s periodicals, but it also came from letters, fliers, and brochures from the groups themselves.
Chapter eight concludes with a summary of what I found in the study of the development of communication networks among women and analyzes and evaluates the findings. It notes the importance of these developments.
Women’s media networks provide a wealth of data and perspectives not available in mass media that can enable women’s history to be written more accurately and with more insightful analysis. Such primary sources offer information about both the activists and the theorists of the movement, for, as this study shows, in the women’s movement the theorists are generally a part of the movement. Female historians of the women’s movement have, in fact, organized themselves in an effort to write women into history.
Yet, at the time of this study in 1988, only a few theses and dissertations even mention women’s media, thus indicating the urgency of encouraging this type of research for the history of women. The one significant study of women’s media, dealing solely with feminist periodicals, was written in 1975. While the existence of women’s media may be taken for granted today more than when Anne Mather wrote her thesis on the early feminist periodicals, many of these primary documents are still missing from the historical record. Most of the “videoletters,” for example, that document what was taking place in the women’s movement in the early 1970’s, though a rich source for historians, are lost to us today. Other women’s media are available, but are underutilized. And many periodicals are being discarded now that should be preserved. Yet, if historians were sufficiently aware of the significance, extent, and diversity of women’s media, then in turn the libraries and archives would be encouraged to acquire these valuable sources. Women’s media are a ripe area for research; they reflect American women’s wide diversity of ideas, insights, and interests, and, as can be seen in the following six chapters, they spoke as the various parts of the movement that they in fact were.
Early Recognition of the Need for a Means of Communication
Women, like other groups of Americans, have long recognized the need to communicate with each other and with the general public and to directly put forth their own views for themselves. It was recognized and accepted by all such groups that, based on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (to be discussed shortly), owners of established media had the right to and did speak for themselves, but that they did not, and could not, speak for others (even though they may claim to be representing or mirroring “the public”).
“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long has the publick [sic] been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly,” wrote editors John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish in 1827 in Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States, published in New York. Russwurm and Cornish launched their journal after repeated attempts to get letters to the editor published in response to vile attacks against blacks in the New York Enquirer and several other New York City papers. When they were unable to obtain access to the mass media, they began their own periodical. Although they would be unable to reach such a large, diverse audience for their information and perspectives, at least they would be able to get their message out and it would be in their own words. In 1847 Frederick Douglass established the North Star to allow blacks a voice independent of the white abolitionists. Although by the end of the Civil War only 24 black journals were still being published, between 1865 and 1900 almost 1,200 new black periodicals emerged, indicating the birth of a significant and growing communication network among black Americans. With the twentieth century came the continued growth of the black press. In 1905 W.E.B. DuBois began the first of five periodicals he would publish in the cause of justice and equality for blacks. In 1910 Dubois began his 24-year association with The Crisis, the official journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, beginning with a press run of 500, and reaching a peak circulation of 100,000 by 1918. The same year DuBois began publishing, Robert S. Abbott founded the Chicago Defender. Within ten years the Defender had more than 200,000 subscribers in both the North and the South. After Abbott’s death in 1940, his nephew John Sengstacke took over as publisher, making it a part of the largest Black newspaper group in America. By the mid-1970’s, more than 200 black weekly newspapers were reaching 4.3 million readers, and there were five dailies and approximately 175 magazines, according to Lauren Kessler in The Dissident Press. While the figures fell to fewer than 100 weeklies and only one daily by 1980, there nevertheless exists a strong communication network among black Americans and a recognized need for efforts to strengthen and expand a voice for blacks independent of white control.
Women, too, were to learn from their experience with established media, and also with male-run alternative organizations’ media, the need to have their own voice. Many women working for the abolition of slavery in the early 19th Century discovered from that experience the need both for women’s rights and for an independent means of communication. In subsequent years, as women found that the existing media had not adequately provided a forum for their issues, they established periodicals which by exchanging their ideas and information, not only proved vital to advancing their cause but also stimulated action. Women’s media, like the black press, helped to shape consciousness and to generate movements for change.
Women began publishing reform periodicals in the 1840’s. In 1848 Amelia Bloomer launched The Lily, a paper whose masthead declared itself: “Devoted to the Interests of Women.” One of the most important o
f the early women’s papers appeared in 1868 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the 16-page weekly Revolution to cover the many concerns of women that the male-owned press of the day failed to cover: healthier dress for women, the sexual double standard, marriage and divorce, prostitution, suffrage, and issues of particular concern to working women, such as equal pay for equal work. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin began publishing Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly in New York City in 1870. Topics they covered included abortion, venereal disease, prostitution, the occult, suffrage and women’s restrictive clothing. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin edited the New Era Club’s Woman’s Era Magazine in Boston. Ruffin, a woman of mixed ancestry — African, Indian, French and English — took the lead in calling on black women to organize a national organization since many white women excluded Afro-American women from their organizations. In 1917 Woman Citizen formed as a combination of the Woman’s Journal and several smaller suffrage papers. In 1902 Margaret Sanger started Woman Rebel, a magaz
ine concerned almost exclusively with the issue of birth control. Charlotte Perkins Gilman devoted seven years to publishing The Forerunner, serving as its editor and sole contributor. The National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs’ The Independent Woman ; the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Four Lights ; the Woman’s Party’s Equal Rights are among the organizations that continued publishing throughout the decades and continue today (although several under new names).
While individuals and organizations continued to publish notable women’s periodicals, not all were women-owned and run as were characteristic of the women’s periodicals which began emerging in the late 1960’s. For example, the suffrage paper, Women’s Journal , was edited in 1870 by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell, and Mary Livermore, who had given up her paper The Agitator to join them. For most of the 1920’s and the next three or four decades until the late 1960’s, there was no women’s media movement. The few women’s periodicals that existed were mostly the newsletters and journals published by women’s organizations for their members only. Not only was there thus no continuity with any of the pre-1920’s women’s media, but in an era prior to women’s studies programs, most of the founders of the women’s periodicals of the late 1960’s were unaware of the earlier papers. The new media began consciously as women-owned and operated media for and about women in reaction to the control that males had over women’s communications and women’s lives.
The communications system in this country had developed such that it was primarily in the hands of wealthy, white males. It was also concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The basis was being laid for a future revolt, one that came in the 1960’s, against the tight control of women’s information by male-owned media.
The Development of the Nation’s Communications System
While the American communications media system is considered to be securely grounded on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of the press for individual expression of one’s beliefs and information, the Amendment does not in reality further most people’s communication. Since the day when the Amendment was first adopted, the increasing cost of media technology led to dominance by the wealthy men, such as the corporate officials in conglomerate giants.
Individual printers who usually did all the work themselves owned and published the first newspapers in colonial days. They presented opinions and news information were presented in the form of articles and letters, announcements of ship arrivals, lists of their contents, and, for income, advertisements and official government notices.
The printer-owners of these papers put forth the facts and opinions they felt were important to circulate. This rationale remains the raison d’être of the U.S. media, sanctioned by court interpretation of the First Amendment’s free press clause which is thought to belong to every American without regard to whether they have the money to exercise it.
Even though women and others in the past could see the gap between theory and reality, they have not challenged the purpose of mainstream media. They have simply wanted to be able to do the same, to communicate their own information directly from themselves without intermediaries and with a similar outreach to the whole public. The rise of women-owned media resulted from their decreasing ability to do so.
At the time the First Amendment was adopted in 1789, the dream seemed attainable. The ability to reach the public was far more equal than it has been at any time since then. No one, no matter how wealthy, could print more than a few hundred copies of a newspaper per day because the press in 1800 was still the same as in the time when Gutenberg invented moveable type which revolutionized the printing process (mid-15th century). Becoming a printer did not takes large sums of money, although the amounts required surpassed the income available to most working class individuals. In the age of the pamphleteer and of many newspapers, the authors of the First Amendment could not have imagined or prepared their words to suit the world of today’s media technology.
While at the same time that the size of the country expanded, so did the complexity of press technology — and its cost — needed to reach that larger and more diverse population. With the invention of faster presses and machine-made paper, Benjamin Day inaugurated the era of the “penny press” in the 1830’s. Thousands of copies could be printed daily for one cent each instead of the usual six cents. This new equipment cost thousands of dollars but made it possible for its owners eventually to reach millions of people. The “poor printer” gave way to wealthy individuals as owners, then to companies and corporations, and, now, conglomerates. Publishers relied heavily on advertisers to cover the higher costs, a factor which increasingly affected the character of the news and information the public received when editors feared alienating these sources of revenue. If increased costs were great, increased profits were also substantial and there was no longer any semblance of equal ability among Americans to communicate their information. Those with limited incomes could not reach the large numbers reached by those with or backed by wealth. Thus, the press that could now afford mass outreach became an increasingly powerful, independent political force. Virtually all Americans, from candidates for public office to women seeking change, had to look to mass media owners and editors rather than directly to the public to whom they wished to speak and whose support they sought.
A number of current writers have noted the powerful role the media has come to play and the increasing domination by a few individuals and corporations, as contrasted to the early newspapers. Don Pember wrote in Mass Media in America :
“Two hundred years ago if readers complained about a newspaper, the publisher could honestly look them straight in the eye and tell them if they didn’t like the paper they could start their own or buy one of the competitor’s journals. Likewise, if a person had something to tell the community, he or she could seek a platform in any one of the often half-dozen publications. Of course, this is not possible today — and we are the lesser for it.”
While in 1900 there were 2,042 daily papers and 2,023 owners, by 1980 there were 1,730 dailies and 760 owners. Ben Bagdikian, reporter and editor for more than 30 years, noted that by the late 1960’s most Americans had no choice in their local printed news, since 97 percent of all cities with daily newspapers had only one company printing the news. “Present news systems already are highly selective,” he wrote in 1971. “Daily newspaper in the United States are almost all local monopolies, so that the printed picture of the country is under control of one man or a group of men. This is intensified by the fact that half of these papers are also owned by men who control other monopoly papers as well, so that if they wished to exercise a bias, each proprietor has this power over many cities.” Writing in the mid-1960’s about the Washington Press Corps, William Rivers commented on the growing awareness among the American people of the power of media, and noted, “control of information is central to power.” He described the pressure on newspaper correspondents to slant their dispatches according to their publisher’s leanings or face having their stories played down, cut or killed for “policy reasons.”
Broadcast communications developed with more precise guidelines. It was more evident that with limited airwave spectrum the broadcast business in existence had a responsibility to the public to be fair, that is, to share air time with views held by other members of the public. However, the concentration of ownership as well as the fact that three networks dominated the industry, was a cause of concern by the 1960’s. In the late 1960’s most of the top 50 television markets which served approximately 75 percent of the nation’s television homes had three competing commercial VHF television stations. More than 90 percent were owned by entities that owned other media interests. “I fear that we have already reached the point in this country where the media, our greatest check on other accumulations of power, may themselves be beyond the reach of any other institution: the Congress, the President, or the Federal Communications Commission, not to mention governors, mayors, state legislators, and city councilmen,” stated FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson in 1968.
While in 1967 and 1968 the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee held extensive hearings into the interlocking ownerships of the communications media, and its seven-volume transcript provided information about the media “barons,” by the 1980’s the Fairness Doctrine, adopted in 1949, as well as other regulation of the media were being discarded. Yet concentration increases steadily. Mass media today constitute some of the most highly monopolized sectors of the American economy. In 1982, mass media in America was concentrated in the hands of fifty or fewer corporations which in turn are interlocked with other massive industries and multinational banks. Less than 50 corporations controlled half or more of all the major media in the country in 1982. By 1987 the figure was 29 or fewer corporations. Most of the biggest firms have direct interest not only in domestic, but in foreign investments as well, and therefore have a stake in both the foreign and domestic policies of the United States.
Writers on the mass media, in addition to documenting the concentration of ownership, indicate that this steadily increasing trend has serious implications. For women, concentration of communications media in a few hands, nearly all male, meant their chances of being heard by the public and by other women were slim. The American system of freedom of the press was not working for the vast majority of Americans who could not afford to compete for the technology needed to reach the public with their information. Recognition of this situation came through trial & error experience, but it eventually was the cause of the rise of women-owned networks of communication in print and other media forms.
Effects of Relying on Mass Media as Sole Communications Forum
Many women learned the importance of having their own media during World War II and the postwar aftermath in the 1950’s. During the war period, the mass media had encouraged women to try nontraditional jobs, and from the experience women found they liked the work and the economic independence. But in the postwar years mass media ignored this new information now a part of women’s experience and instead presented, and popularized by frequent repetition, their own opinion that women’s proper place was in the home.
Historians have described this campaign and its many facets. One wrote: “The woman who identified herself as ‘just a housewife’ on radio or television shows of the day was greeted with appreciative applause; and no other ‘occupation’ received such widespread adulation in the nation’s popular magazines.” Others wrote: “The feminine mystique was a propaganda campaign aimed at women of all classes, purveyed by all the media. Furthermore, there was nothing subtle about it. It not only argued that women ought to stay home, but predicted failure if they ventured outside their appropriate sphere.”
In describing the impact of media on women’s roles after World War II, another historian noted, “the new emphasis on domesticity was everywhere apparent. In newspapers and magazines, on radio and billboards, Rosie the Riveter was replaced by the homemaker as the national feminine model.” Mass media trivialized women by portraying them in stereotyped characterizations. “[F]emale film stars of the 1950’s were either sweet, innocent, and characterless, like Debbie Reynolds and Doris Day, or, like Marilyn Monroe, projected a complex blend of innocence and aggressive sexuality,” wrote this historian. Television began in the 1950’s to broadcast its message into homes, portraying the woman “either as sex object or as a contented homebody, often flighty and irresponsible.”
Several historians have noted the contrast of the 1950’s to the portrayal of women during World War II. Magazines and films which applauded the capable, active women who could manage a house, raise children, and work full time did not ridicule women for wearing trousers during the war years. Maureen Honey has documented how editors of popular romance magazines, prodded by war-time propaganda agencies of the federal government, used fictional portrayals of women to encourage women to think of themselves as strong and independent during the war, and as consumers dependent on the household after the war. At that time, the projected image of Rosie the Riveter vanished, despite the continued participation of women in the workforce.
While developing a positive image of women’s work as home-centered, the mass media also developed a negative image of career women. Historians have cited the example of media use of psychiatrists to support and promote their stereotyping of career women. Despite the media’s post-war portrayal of women as ideally suited to the home and its characterization of working women as perverse, most women wished to retain their employment in the same industry or occupation, as during the war years. According to a study by the Women’s Bureau, 84% of the women interviewed in the Women’s Bureau study had to support themselves, and often others as well. Eight percent said they needed to continue work for special reasons such as sending children to school or buying a house. Some women, facing discrimination and lay-offs, filed union grievances and collectively protested. Various organizations, from the YWCA to ad hoc union committees held conferences to deal with this problem. In December 1945, 200 women picketed the Ford Highland Motor Plant over its discriminatory practices which further indicated women’s desire not only to retain their jobs but their willingness to fight for them. But mass media did not cover these concerns of women. Despite the fact that the number of women in the workforce steadily increased in the 1950’s and 1960’s, mass media promoted only one option: that of homemaker.
Women began to realize the major impact that such media images had in shaping their images of themselves and the images others formed about them. Dissatisfaction among women about their portrayal began to grow in the late fifties — among working women who were constantly denigrated by these media stereotypes, by women who were not satisfied with being “just” a housewife, and by women who felt that they should be playing a role in world politics. The few women who had remained active and conscious of women’s rights throughout the fifties were now joined by large numbers. At the turn of the decade, the rebellion that had been silently growing against male media control over the dissemination of women’s information, suddenly burst out. Greater numbers of women became active in efforts to communicate with each other by establishing their own media to make changes in their lives and the world.
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Chapter One Footnotes
1 Woman to Woman, Feminist Newsletter, New Orleans, Louisiana 4 (October 1985):1.
2 “How the Libs and the Feds Plan to Spend Your Money,” The Phyllis Schlafly Report , (Alton, Illinois) 9 (May 1976), pp. 1-2, 4; “Cuddling Up to Caribbean Communists,” The Phyllis Schlafly Report 10 (July 1977), pp.1-4; “Don’t surrender the U.S. Canal!,” The Phyllis Schlafly Report 10 (February 1977), pp.1-3.
3 In discussing periodicals, termination dates are generally included when known, but at times inclusion of this information would not have been pertinent or would have been disruptive to the points being made. Therefore dates are included with the list of periodicals in the bibliography. Women’s periodicals, as well as other forms of media, were not begun as business with the expectation that they would continue indefinitely. Therefore when a women’s media lasted a few years, as opposed to a few decades or more, it was not seen as a failure but as a specific contribution for a particular need. While many women’s media begun in the early years are still in existence today, many more have ceased. Others spring up constantly to replace them, providing a constantly growing network. In 1988, for example, over 375 women’s periodicals exist in the United States, not counting all the chapter newsletters of organizations such as the National Organization for Women and the National Women’s Political Caucus. Circulation figures are mentioned where known. Most periodicals did not provide their circulation figures (only second-class mailed periodicals are required to divulge this information). Women’s periodicals sometimes use idiosyncratic capitalization and spelling in their titles (and text). The word women, for instance, might be spelled wimmin or womyn.
4 For information on the development of the black press see Lauren Kessler, The Dissident Press (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984); Paula Giddings “The Beginning: The Spirit of the Early Black Press,” Encore 20 (June 1977), and Freedom’s Journal, editorial I (June 20 1977); “Black Press Notebook,” Encore (July 5 1977); Lee Finkle, Forums for Protest: The Black Press During World War II (London: Associated University Presses, 1975); Vishnu V. Oak, The Negro Newspaper ( Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1948); Maxwell R. Brooks, The Negro Press Re-Examined; Political Content of Leading Negro Newspapers (Boston: The Christopher Publishing House, 1959); Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922); Harry G. LaBrie, The Black Newspapers in America: A Guide (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1970); Martin E. Dann, The Black Press , 1827-1890, The Quest for National Identity (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971); L.D. Reddick “Educational Programs for the Improvement of the Race Relations: Motion Pictures, Radio, The Press, and Libraries,” Journal of Negro Education XII (Summer 1944); Irvine Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969); “The Afro-American Editor’s Mission, by Eminent Journalists: 1891”, Encore 20 (June 1977); Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice, the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); Darwin T. Turner, “Images of Blacks in Visual-Auditory Media,” UMOJA n.s.11, 2 (Summer 1978): 111-122; Roland Wolseley, The Black Press in the United States (Ames, Ia.: Iowa State University Press, 1974); Lawrence D. Hogan, A Black National News Service, The Associated Negro Press and Claude Barnett, 1919-1945 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1984); and Martha Leslie Allen, “Black Women Journalists and the Black Press in the South at the Turn of the Century, 1895-1904”, unpublished master’s thesis (Washington, D.C.: Howard University, 1978). In June 1977 The Black Press Archives was established at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University.
5 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle:The Woman’s Right Movement in the United States (New York: Atheneum, 1968), pp. 82, 189-190; Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, A History of Women in America (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1978), pp. 161-167; Judith Papachristou, ed., Women Together, A History in Documents of the Women’s Movement in the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 61, 75; Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., The Afro-American Woman, Struggles and Images (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978), p. 51; Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), p. 270; William Jay Jacobs, Women in American History (Beverly Hills: Benzinger, Bruce & Glencoe, Inc., 1976), p. 251; and Mary R. Beard, Women As Force in History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1971), p. 37.
6 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle , p. 152; Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, A History of Women in America , p. 163.
7 Among the periodicals still publishing in the 1960’s were The Graduate Woman, of the American Association of University Women ; American Women in Radio and Television News and Views, of the American Women in Radio and Television; The National Voter, of the League of Women Voters; The National Business Woman [called The Independent Woman up until 1956], of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women; the National Woman’s Party’s Equal Rights; NCAWE , periodical of the National Council of Administrative Women in Education; Four Lights , of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Women Lawyer’s Journal, of the National Association of Women Lawyers; and the Ladder, of the Daughters of Bilitis.
8 The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” None of these rights except the press requires any significant amount of money to exercise.
9 In New York City, James Gordon Bennett, related John Tebbel in The Compact History of the American Newspaper, “had only $500 to his name, but it was enough to establish him in a Wall Street basement with an ailing press, scarcely more than enough type, and a desk made of a wide plank laid across two flour barrels, but out of this cellar emerged one May morning in 1835 a newspaper In only fifteen months, the Herald boasted 40, 000 circulation, and it was climbing every day.” (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1963), pp. 96-97.
10 “So You Think You Have a Free Press,” by Donna Allen, pamphlet available from the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), Washington, DC, 1970 and “Call For Research,” by Donna Allen and Dana Densmore, WIFP, 1977, p. 2. Classic descriptions of the development of the nation’s print media, including press ownership and technological development, may be found in James Melvin Lee, History of American Journalism (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1917), pp.15,16,64; Alfred McClung Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (New York: MacMillan Co., 1037), pp. 97,99-101, 113,116,117; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States1690-1872 (New York: Harper Bros., 1873), pp. 418,420; Edwin Emery, The Press and America, An Interpretive History of Journalism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978), pp. 32-33, 210,214; Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, A History: 1690-1960 (New York: MacMillan, 1962), pp. 46-47, 49-51,54; and John Tebble, The Compact History of the American Newspaper, pp. 11-21, 33-39, 93-97.
11 Don R. Pember, Mass Media in America (Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc., 1983), p. 362.
12 Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press,1983), p. 9.
13 Ben H. Bagdikian, The Information Machines, Their Impact on Men and the
Media (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 137, 294.
14 William L. Rivers, The Opinion Makers, The Washington Press Corps (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 129, 174-175.
15 Nicholas Johnson, “The Media Barons and the Public Interest, An FCC Commissioner’s Warning.” The Atlantic 6 (June 1968), pp. 48,50.
16 Editors, “The American Media Baronies.” The Atlantic, July 1969, p. 86.
17 Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, pp. 4-19. A few statistics illustrate the extent of this concentration. As of 1980 there were 1,730 daily newspapers, with a total daily circulation of 61 million. Twenty corporations controlled more than half the daily sales. One percent of owners owned 34 percent of all papers sold daily. Daily newspapers today provide the news indicators for other media such as weeklies, magazines, books, radio, television and even movies. Over half the $12 billion in revenues of the 11,000 magazines in this country as of 1980 were in the hands of twenty corporations. One percent of magazine owners received more than half of magazine revenues. There are 1,000 television stations on the air, dominated by three networks- ABC, CBS, and NBC. Together with their owned and operated television stations in the major markets, in 1980 the three networks received more than half of the $8.8 billion of television revenues. Of the 9,000 radio stations, 8,000 are commercially operated. Radio goes to 99.9 percent of American homes and to most cars. Ten companies dominate the radio market. There are 2,500 book publishers producing 34,000 new titles a year. Most of the publishers, however, publish only from one to five books a year. In1980, eleven corporations received more than half the $7 billion in book sales. Book store chains were also concentrating ownership in the distribution market, often with interlocking directorates. While there are eight or nine movie studies, four of these studios dominate the industry with more than half the business.
18 Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, pp. 5,7. In a March 18, 1987 phone conversation, Bagdikian stated that the consolidation had reached 29 or fewer corporations. “There is almost no country in the world in which a subsidiary of the fifty media companies does not have a significant investment,” Bagdikian wrote. “One major media company alone, CBS, has foreign subsidiaries headquartered in thirty-four countries, ranging from Argentina to South Africa.” The book industry is consolidating to just five to seven major companies, source for the industry stated, according to an article by Laura Landro in The Wall Street Journal in March 1987 entitled “Book Industry Faces More Consolidation; Only a Handful of Big Publishers May Survive.”
19 Don Pember, Mass Media in America, p. 255. Pember provided useful statistics on the media concentration: “The dimensions of this economic concentration have reached such serious proportions that a single newspaper group owns 85 daily newspapers; nearly 9 percent of the millions of newspapers delivered each Sunday are published by a single chain; only 2.5 percent of the cities in America with daily newspapers have competing daily papers; media chains control more than 75 percent of all commercial television stations, and so forth.” (p. 255) For more information on the concentration of media ownership, see Stephen R. Barnett, “Monopoly Gains,” Columbia Journalism Review, (May-June 1980); “Disclosure of Corporate Ownership”, December 27, 1973, (Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.); Robert H. Stanley and Charles S. Steinberg, The Media Environment: Mass Communications in American Society (New York: Hastings House Publications, Inc.); and numerous issues of both The Guild Reporter (Official Publication of The Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO, Washington, DC) and Media Report to Women (Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, Washington, D.C.).
20 William Jay Jacobs, Women in American History, p. 259.
21 Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby, eds., America’s Working Women (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 302.
22 Lois W. Banner, Women in Modern America, A Brief History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1974), p. 215.
23 Judith Papchristou, ed., Women Together, A History in Documents of the Women’s Movement in the United States, p. 214; Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter ; Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).
24 Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, A History of Women in America, p.325. Baxandall, Gordon and Reverby, America’s Working Women (p. 311) noted that the percentage of black women who desired to keep their jobs was especially high.
