Talking About Florida Women’s Page Editors
I am looking forward to presenting “Pioneering Florida Women’s Page Journalists: Managing Conflict and Encouraging Compromise in Their Communities, 1950s and 1960s,” at the Florida Council for History Education conference in Sarasota.
Mixed in with the advertisements in the 1950s and 1960s, there were several newspaper women’s pages that included stories that were part of the women’s movement’s platform – stories about domestic violence, the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion reform. These stories reached large audiences and impacted the work of other editors and women leaders. The circulations of the papers were high so the work of the women editors reached large segments of their own communities and sometimes beyond them. This was because leading women’s page editors read each other’s publications to find content ideas.
These sections also included large doses of soft news such stories about food and fashion. These topics are often overlooked by historians but valued by readers. These beats allowed the female reporters numerous opportunities to travel as they covered fashion shows and judged cooking contests. Recipe columns connected newspapers and their readers. newspapers have a direct connection to the community that a national magazine does not. Food editors will largely write about local stores, local restaurants, and local cooks. For example, the Akron Beacon Journal food editor Polly Paffilas said this:
“The newspaper food editor is the homemakers’ best friend, mother confessor and mentor. Mrs. Jones calls us when she can’t understand a recipe in a national magazine or when Graham Kerr talks about clarified butter. Mrs. Jones doesn’t call the magazine or the TV station. She calls me.”
An examination of Florida newspaper content reveals a snapshot of a changing time for gender roles in the 1940s and 1960s. For example, consider: “Women Are Root of Trouble.” That was the message from British psychiatrist Joshua Bierer who was on an American lecture tour in 1966. He said the United States was becoming “a matriarchy and this is an unhealthy thing.” His views were debated by numerous women, including Betty Friedan and Marya Mannes, who called into question his statements. The article, which ran in newspapers across the country, was clearly pro-women but it was a sign there was a worry about women’s roles in society.
In 1966, Florida women’s page journalist Marjorie Paxson, who would go on to be a publisher, noted their seemed to be many experts on the problems of women. While these experts had a public voice, so did she as a women’s page journalist. In a speech to other women’s page journalists, she said:
“They – and they usually are men – tell us in book after book what’s wrong with women and what women should do about it. The situation is so bad that earlier this month, McCall’s Editor Robert Stein suggested a federal award for men ‘who in the course of the year have NOT written a book or article about the proper role in the life of women.”
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