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NRJ Book Review: Desperately Seeking Women Readers

Desperately Seeking Women Readers By Dustin Harp (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007) 136 pages, $24.95 paperback.Reviewed by Kim LandonWomen's history is fraught with double binds. Situations in which women must give up something important in order to gain something equally important abound in women's cultural evolution. Here is yet another one. When newspapers began designating special pages for women, many women felt that at last editors had recognized their existence and their issues. However, others felt that if their concerns were reported only on special pages, it signaled their still-marginal status in public life. Birth control, child rearing and the like all became "women's news," and coverage was relegated to those subordinate pages almost exclusively for most of the 20th century.University of Texas Assistant Professor Dustin Harp provides a thoroughly researched and documented discussion of the newspaper industry's pursuit of these most desirable readers. She begins with the mid-19th century emergence of women's magazines. As advertisers realized that women made most of the purchasing decisions, they became intoxicated with the idea of magazines targeted at women. It wasn't long before newspaper editors caught the fever and began chasing female readers (consumers) as well. They haven't stopped since.Harp effectively connects the evolution of women's pages to feminist history. She shows that first- and second- wave feminism influenced how newspapers positioned women's news in their pages and explains how the current "third wave" of feminism does not represent a single point of view on the subject of women's pages. The first wave feminists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wanted recognition and ultimately the vote. They felt that magazines and newspaper pages directed at them symbolized a victory of sorts. They saw their sisters gain employment as journalists assigned to report for the female audience. Even so, many early feminists felt these practices reinforced women's marginal position in society. Newspapers covered issues of importance to women as if they were secondary issues, not the "real" news, not "men's" news. Women's news historically came from the domestic sphere, implying that men's news came from the public sphere. This sent some disturbing signals to society. One was that men need not worry about issues primarily centered in the home and another was that women's concerns were not part of the public arena where politics and economics dominated the news.The more radical second wave of feminism of the 1960s and 1970s demanded acknowledgement of women's changing role in society. These critics found newspaper pages designated for women to be marks of segregation and disempowerment. At the same time, women employed within the newspaper industry won some important anti-discrimination cases and before long, sexspecific pages began to disappear. First The Washington Post and more famously, The New York Times, established "Style" and other homely named special sections to contain the softer news previously associated with women's pages. …