Barbara M. Freeman – författare

Have the Canadian media given feminism a bad name or have they been among the movement's strongest supporters? Is journalistic objectivity a myth when it comes to women's voices, or doesn't it matter? In this provocative new book - the first one to examine print and broadcast news coverage of women's issues in English Canada - Barbara Freeman explores what the media were saying about women and their concerns during an important period in our history - and why. The Satellite Sex is both a social history and a media case study of the years 1966-1971, when the feminist movement began once more to gather support. Women wanted equal treatment under the law, and they wanted rights they had not gained when they won the vote many years earlier. In response, the Canadian government appointed a federal inquiry on the status of women, and hundreds of women came forward to talk to the Commission about the injustices they experienced at school, at work, in public life, in their homes, and even in their bedrooms. The Satellite Sex demonstrates that the print and broadcast media coverage of women's issues at that time were much more complex and fragmented than revealed by research in the United States on the same era. This book, released thirty years after the Canadian Commission presented its report, also raises questions about the lack of strong feminist voices in today's news media.

Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women's Rights in Canada explores the ways in which several of Canada's women journalists, broadcasters, and other media workers reached well beyond the glory of their personal bylines to advocate for the most controversial women's rights of their eras. To do so, some of them adopted conventional feminine identities, while others refused to conform altogether, openly and defiantly challenging the gender expectations of their day. The book consists of a series of case studies of the women in question as they grappled with the concerns close to their hearts: higher education for women, healthy dress reforms, the vote, equal opportunities at work, abortion, lesbianism, and Aboriginal women's rights. Their media reflected their respective eras: intellectual magazines, daily and weekly newspapers, radio, feminist public relations, alternative women's periodicals, and documentary film made for television. Barbara Freeman takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining biography, history, and communication studies to demonstrate how their use of different media both enabled and limited these women in their ability to be daring advocates for gender equality. She shows how a number of these women were linked through the generations by their memberships in activist women's organizations.