Women’s History Month: Clarice Rowlands
For day 22 of Women’s History Month, I am featuring another Milwaukee Journal’s women’s page journalist – food writer Clarice Rowlands. After a search for her work, I found a brief profile of Rowlands.
She was a native of Cambria, Wisconsin. She earned a degree in journalism in 1936 from the University of Wisconsin. She worked at the Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1937 to 1943. In June 1944, she joined the women’s pages as a general assignment reporter and later worked on the society desk. She eventually made her way to the food section.
She was married to Charles Nevada, who worked in the promotions department of the Milwaukee Journal.
In a profile of her – after winning a Vesta Award for top food writer – she is asked the question that tends to irritate many food writers: Does she cook? (Fashion writers hated to be asked if they sewed.) These women found it undermined their roles as journalists. After all, a sports journalist isn’t asked if he played baseball.
This was Rowlands’ 1961 response: “No, I am a reporter in the field and it is not any more necessary for me to prepare all the food I write about than it is for the paper’s crime reporter to commit the crimes about which he writes.”
She died suddenly of a heart attack in 1967. She was replaced by Jean Otto who I blogged about yesterday.
