Women’s History Month honors the struggles and successes of women in the United States.
What started as a local festivity in the small town of Santa Rosa, California, has inspired nationwide celebrations. A proclamation by President Jimmy Carter then officiated the celebration as Women’s History Week until Congress Public Law 100-9 formally designated March as Women’s History Month in 1987.
Female journalists joined the field in the mid-18th century, but women’s magazines were primarily edited by men through the 19th and into the 20th century. Many women wrote under aliases to combat sexism, but more so for their own safety.
Notorious muckraker Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) is best known for her exposé “The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904).” Her work led to the imminent split of the Standard Oil monopoly due to its violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). Tarbell’s legacy reshaped investigative journalism for years to come.
Nellie Bly (1864-1922) took investigative journalism to a new level in her undercover mission as a patient at an asylum in 1887. Bly was hired onto the staff of the New York World, one of the world’s leading magazines, after barging into their office looking to write a piece about the life of immigrants in the U.S. While editor Joseph Pulitzer declined, he allowed her to write about Blackwell’s Island, one of New York’s most vile mental asylums. Bly gained firsthand access by “assuming” a mental illness. Her work “Ten Days in the Madhouse” quickly gained traction, eventually increasing funding for programs and asylums to improve the quality of life in mental institutions.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) paved the way for women in multiple disciplines. As a scholar, Fuller was the first woman allowed access to a Harvard library. During wartime, she became one of the first female correspondents to report on the war and revolution in Europe. Her book, “Women in the Nineteenth Century,” is deemed one of the first mainstream feminist pieces in the United States.
Despite the dangerous and often scandalous conditions for women in the field, they continue to persevere. Recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization reports present increasing attacks, harassment and sexual harassment of women journalists around the world. A survey by UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists most commonly reported that 49% of online threats were offensive language. Over a fourth of the participants reported significant mental health impacts. Out of the 25% who reported threats to their employers, ten percent reported inaction and nine percent reported bosses undermining their concerns.
A recent report by UNESCO’s IPDC also highlighted four deaths a year on average of female journalists between 2006 and 2013. In the next two years, the number rose to nine. The following year, the number of deaths peaked at 13. Kim Wall and Daphne Caruana’s brutal murders in 2017 caused outrage within the journalism community and the public. Efforts to protect women—and men— in the field include mandatory life-saving safety workshops. On a global scale, the United Nations Secretary General presented “The safety of journalists and the issue of impunity” at the General Assembly of 2017 to address the safety of female journalists around the world.
