Death threats. Racist taunts. Vows of violence. Inside the increasingly personal attacks targeting Canadian female journalists, the most common complaint is the idea of getting too close to the media.
The complaints about journalists in North America are not new. In 1841, as a young man in the American South, Henry David Thoreau wrote of “the new rage of the press,” which he blamed on the American Civil War.
“What, then, is the new rage of the press? — Nothing but newspaper-reading, and journalism as a game or pastime. This was the idea of the American Revolution: to make paper do what the sword could not,” he wrote.
The attacks against female media representatives are an expression of that same urge that Thoreau warned against.
“Journalism is the invention of women. It is the only invention that is not the work of nature,” he wrote.
“When women began to talk, they invented journalism to record their words.”
In the beginning
Historically, Canadian women haven’t had the same privileges in newsrooms as men, because they are less likely to speak with the press and because they are more likely to be in the workplace beyond the workplace.
The first woman to make a significant impact in print in Canada was Eliza Cook, who wrote for the New York Tribune in 1837. She was followed by Kate Woodhouse of the Toronto Star in 1873, Ellen Ewing, who moved to New York at age 30, and Annie Robinson in 1893.
By the time women began to write in Canada in the late 19th century, they were generally working in a different field.
“In the 18th century, female journalists were working for newspapers, and that was enough,” said Emily DePatt, a PhD student in history at the University of Western Ontario who wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the history of women in Canadian media. “They were not in journalism, and by and large, in English Canada, they were not working for newspapers.”
In the early 20th century, women took over the roles previously held by men and women in the field. They began to write for the news, including for the
