This week as part of women’s history month, I will be blogging about the role of feminism and the women’s pages. It is a complicated relationship. The women’s pages were a place for strong female voices – some of whom were outspoken supporters of the Women’s Liberation Movement and others who were not self described “feminists” but believers in the same causes. The difficult part for many of these women is that leaders such as Gloria Steinem lobbied for the demise of the sections. Publishers did eliminate the sections and many women’s page editors lost their jobs. This happened to Marjorie Paxson twice. Steinem later reversed herself in terms of the need for women’s pages but it was too late.

In my work on food editors, I recently came across Steinem speaking at a 1971 meeting for these journalists. Ms. magazine was still a few months away from publishing. This was her response when asked about her view of food pages: “the most destructive thing about them is that they make women feel their self worth depends on being a cook.” This is a rather dismissive statement to women whose careers were based on food.

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This week as part of women’s history month, I will be blogging about the role of feminism and the women’s pages. It is a complicated relationship. The women’s pages were a place for strong female voices – some of whom were outspoken supporters of the Women’s Liberation Movement and others who were not self described “feminists” but believers in the same causes. The difficult part for many of these women is that leaders such as Gloria Steinem lobbied for the demise of the sections. Publishers did eliminate the sections and many women’s page editors lost their jobs. This happened to Marjorie Paxson twice. Steinem later reversed herself in terms of the need for women’s pages but it was too late.

In my work on food editors, I recently came across Steinem speaking at a 1971 meeting for these journalists. Ms. magazine was still a few months away from publishing. This was her response when asked about her view of food pages: “the most destructive thing about them is that they make women feel their self worth depends on being a cook.” This is a rather dismissive statement to women whose careers were based on food.

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