Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Womenas Rights in Canada

Review ``Barbara Freeman's Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women's Rights in Canada ... explores the complex role played by Canadian women journalists, broadcasters, and media workers in the struggle for women's rights in Canada. Combining biography and media history, the book painstakingly documents the lives and work of a broad range of feminist media practitioner-activists across the platforms of newspapers, magazines, broadcasting, public relations and documentary filmmaking. The jury praised this book's important contribution to the ongoing project of exposing the rich legacy of feminism and women in the history of Canadian social movements and media.'' -- Jury assessment for the Gertrude J. Robinson award (CCA)``Beyond Bylines, as Barbara Freeman notes, is the first book to provide a sustained account of gender struggles and women's roles in Canadian media history (p. 3). Freeman's approach will captivate Canadian readers interested in the growth of media and feminism in our country; on a chapter-by-chapter basis, it should be useful to scholars beyond our borders interested in particular figures, movements, or media forms.... Freeman's book provides a solid starting place for examining women and media in Canada, and she offers it as a generative rather than definitive ‘way of opening up research in the field and encouraging others to do the same.’... [H]er approach combines biography and discourse analysis within a journalism studies, media, and women's history perspective. This is a rich mix. Her seven chapters avoid well-know activists to craft portraits of lesser-known figures.... In the end, the book can serve as a pull-apart reference for readers interested in particular figures or decades. This pull-apart feature may be particularly useful for scholars outside Canada with limited investment in understanding the historical trajectory of women in our national media. For Canadians, reading the entire volume provides insight into the cultural history of women's advocacy through changing issues and forms of media.'' -- Jaqueline McLeod Rogers ― Feminist Media Studies, 13 (5), November 2013``In this meticulously researched collection of seven essays, Freeman, a former broadcaster and long-time journalism educator at Carleton, uses a case-study approach to consider female media workers who ‘reached beyond the glory of their personal bylines’ to push boundaries and further the feminist cause. No one is more suited than Freeman to examine the subject. She led the way for journalism historians in Canada with her seminal 1989 biography of female pioneer Kathleen Blake Coleman (Kit's Kingdom).... Freeman states in the introduction to the book that she did not intend to write a comprehensive history of women media workers. Rather, she notes, she ought to highlight only a few women as a way of encouraging other media scholars to do the same. Much as she opened the door for scholars interested in our journalistic foremothers with her biography of Kit Coleman, Freeman has succeeded in opening the door wider by considering a range of female media workers from different eras and backgrounds in Beyond Bylines.'' -- Linda Kay ― University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 82, Number 3, Summer 2013``In this volume, Barbara Freeman explores how a fascinatingly varied group of prominent and lesser-known female journalists in Canada negotiated the tension between ‘conventional journalism and advocacy’ over more than 130 years. Their perspectives ranged from cautious Christian feminism to Marxism-Leninism; the issues they addressed included everything from women's fashion in the 1890s to lesbian sexuality; they worked in mainstream newspapers, public broadcasting, alternative publications, and documentary filmmaking. What unites them is Freeman's sympathetic and deeply-informed attention to how they all, in one way or another, sought to advance women's interests while struggling to make room for themselves in the Canadian journalistic l