Women Making News

Women Making News tells two stories: first, it examines alternative print-based political cultures that women developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and second, it explores how British female subjects themselves forged a wide range of new political identities through the pages of "their press." Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, a rising cohort of female editors and journalists created a new genre of political journal they proclaimed to be both "for and by women," which continued until the 1930s. The development of new specialized periodicals, such as Women's Penny Paper, Votes for Women, Women's Gazette, and Shafts, fostered the proliferation of diverse political agendas aimed at re-imagining women's status in society. At the same time, the institutional infrastructure of the women's press provided new opportunities for women in nontraditional employments. Tusan's approach employs social and cultural historical analysis in the reading of popular printed texts, as well as rare and previously unpublished personal correspondence and business records from archives throughout Britain. Women Making News is the first book-length study to uncover the important relationship between print culture and the gender politics that provided a vehicle for women's mobilization in the political culture of modern Britain. Michelle Tusan is an assistant professor of British history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A volume in The History of Communication series, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone* Women creating the space for their own political voices in the press