by Annabelle Smith
Picture from National Women's History Alliance
Happy Women’s History Month! For the month of March, The Phantom will be celebrating notable women from across the globe and our history. We’re excited to bring these stories to you, both from the women you’ve heard of and those you’ll get to learn about for the first time right here!
Women’s History Month got its start in 1981 as a week-long celebration. Only four years later, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to make the commemorative week a month-long celebration, and this tradition of honoring women of our past and present has been honored every year since.
In order to pay homage to the women who have shaped the way we gain and share information, this first article will focus on influential female journalists and reporters. These women span across centuries, documenting some of the most monumental moments in human history. They are trailblazers, fearless but also compassionate, breaking boundaries while providing a voice for people across the world.
Margaret Bourke-White is known for her photography of World War Two, from images of female welders on the American homefront to Bedouin camel cavalry in Damascus, Syria, to Luftwaffe bombings of the Red Square. Dorothy Thompson was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany and one of the only women on the radio during the 1930s. Ethel Payne was known as the “First Lady of the Black Press” for her coverage of monumental moments in the fight for civil rights, including press for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. Ida B. Wells became famous for exposing civil rights injustices and violence in America before going on to co-found the NAACP. Nellie Bly, as well as circumnavigating the globe in only seventy-two days, wrote exposées on the mistreatment of patients in mental institutions.
All of these women were incredible journalists, accomplished in their fields, and inspirations to those who followed. But for a modern audience, these names, these accomplishments, feel out of reach. These women lived nearly a century ago. The world has changed since then—much in part to their courageous dedication to the truth—and for better and for worse, the world we live in now does not look like the world they inhabited.
While female reporters today may not be making the news, they are writing it. Countless female reporters and journalists from across the world have been living in Ukraine, exposing the injustices and atrocities being committed during the invasion that caught the world by surprise nearly a year ago.
In an interview with Clarissa Ward, CNN’s leading international correspondent who reported on the invasion of Ukraine for seven weeks straight, she comments, “women are doing some of the best work, because they’re incredibly brave and intrepid, but also full of humanity and compassion.” She goes on to explain, “traditionally, the way we have told [war stories] has been the ‘stand and deliver.’ ‘Well, Jeff, if you look behind me, you can see the front line…’ That doesn’t work anymore.”
This is the work that women are doing, not just in their coverage of the invasion of Ukraine, but in countless humanitarian crises, civil wars, and tragedies occurring across the world. We may not know the names of these women, but we do know how they are telling these stories. In a world so disconnected from itself, these human connections are all the more important. It’s a feat of humanity to step away from the camera and engage with the people around you. To connect. To face the overwhelming reality of the obstacles so many people are facing and decide to give them your voice as well as your compassion.
March has only just begun, and the rest of Women’s History Month will continue to focus on women from across a variety of disciplines, locations, and periods of time. For now, we take a moment to appreciate the women, now and then, who are teaching us to be compassionate. To use our voice, yes, but to also use our hands and our heart.
Sources:
Learn more about Margaret Bourke-White: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/margaret-bourke-white
Learn more about Dorothy Thompson:
Learn more about Ethel Payne:
Learn more about Ida B. Wells:
Learn more about Nellie Bly:
Learn more about female reporters in Ukraine:
Comments