Women and Journalism

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Women journalists in the post-war period

Many of the advances in journalism made by women between 1939 and 1945, when they filled positions vacated by men who fought in the Second World War, were lost over the immediate post-war period when men returned and reclaimed their newsroom jobs. In some cases, women were asked to hand back their jobs to the men they had replaced. In other cases, they were replaced by newly recruited men. For example, Marjorie Paxson had been working for a United Press bureau in the Midwestern US, where she and another woman covered everything but executions and college football (since women were not allowed in the press box). Paxson (1991: 21) says she signed a waiver agreeing to give up her job at the end of the ...