March is International Women’s History Month. Spanning from March 1 to 31 women are celebrated in many ways as they are recognized throughout history for their powerful upholdings, critical thinking and imaginative characteristics.
For 2024 the theme for National Women’s History Month is “women who advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion.” The intention of this year’s theme is to recognize women who know that a positive and good future will only happen if bias and discrimination eliminated in all aspects.
Throughout history there are countless female figures that made a difference in even more different fields like science, engineering, art, math, music and more. There have been many women journalists in the field that have made a difference like Ida B. Wells, Jae Mayer, Carole Simpson, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Maria Ressa just to name a few.
Ida B. Wells is a well know activist and journalist because of her writing exposing lynching, violence, discrimination and segregation. She wrote for various local newspapers including New York Age and Chicago Conservator mostly focusing her writing on anti-lynching and criticizing white suffrage organizations that ignored lynching. She was secretary of the National Afro-American Council and a member of the Niagara Movement helping with immigration from the south. In turn she helped found one for the first black women’s suffrage groups called Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club.
Jane Mayer is a widely awarded journalist known for her work in social justice and investigative reporting as the first female White House Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She wrote many pieces including one in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Gulf War. She has been the New Yorker;s Chief Washington correspondent and staff writer since 1995 and also is the author of numerous books. Some of her books include “Strange Justice” and “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988.”
As the first African American woman to host a major network in 1988 Carole Simpson was the anchor for “World News Tonight” on ABC News weekends for 15 years. She worked for ABC News for 24 years.The 1992 debate between George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot had her as the first person of color moderator in a presidential debate. She also wrote a memoir titled “NewsLady” surrounding her story of in the broadcasting industry facing both racism and sexism in the industry. She retired from ABC News in 2006 and started teaching journalism at Emerson College for the next 13 years.
(Savannah Hayes)
Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism and is a New Your Times investigative reporter. She mostly covers racial injustice and civil rights. She is also the founder of the Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard University. Before working for the New York Times she was an investigative reporter at ProPublica covering demographics and government census for The Oregonian in Portland. One of her major works is the 1619 Project for the New York Times Magazine that notes the consequences of slavery and specifies the contributions of African Americans for the 400th anniversary of slavery’s start. Now the project is available on Hulu for streaming as a six-part series.
Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa won in 2021 for her efforts and fighting for press freedom in the Philippines. She was co-founder of Rappler, a digital news site that reports fake news spread by social media and also centered on manipulated public information. In 2018 she was named person of the year for Time Magazine. This was for her reporting on misinformation coverage in the Philippines by the government and in doing so she faced much political harassment and got arrested and had to post bail 10 times.
