Paper Didn’t Reflect Home Environment

1973

I knew my family was different.

My mother worked and my father took care of me during the day. During the 1970s when I was growing up in Spokane, I knew that was unusual.

Most of my friends had stay-athome moms who were Girl Scout den mothers. My mother’s den was an office and I knew she was important. She was a role model even though I didn’t know what a role model was. She wore elegant clothes and carried a briefcase and was on TV and in the newspaper.

As a girl, I wanted to be all the things she wanted to be when she was growing up: a librarian, a foreign correspondent, a writer, a teacher. The difference was that by her example, I knew it was possible to be all those things and more.

When she was a child, she had to be her own example.

The Spokesman-Review of my childhood didn’t portray the world I knew at home. Women were usually shown as housewives in furniture or car ads, lovingly ready to accept whatever the master of the house brought home - be it appliance or problem.

My mother was an equal partner at my house - ready to offer support as much as be supported. She balanced PTA meetings, homework, doctor’s appointments and my father with her own interests and friends.

So when I returned to those long-ago news pages for this research assignment, I was disappointed at what I saw. In 1973, stories trumpeted firsts for women: the first woman deckhand on the state ferry system came courtesy of a cutesy caption that read “Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of cologne.”

One of the first women to test for a spot as a football official was photographed from behind in a very short pair of shorts. There were few stories about professional women.

There were no stories confirming what I knew: women working because they had skills and dreams to pursue; women balancing 9-to-5 with after school, before school and in the middle of the night; women breaking trends and making trends.

For balance, I looked at pages of The Spokesman-Review from March 8, 1996, my 32nd birthday.

I found stories about women of accomplishment - legislators, CEOs and professional athletes. But there also were ‘90s revisions to 1970s stories: models in skimpy attire, depressing accounts about the lack of progress for minority workers and female executives, wage discrepancies and civil rights abuses.

Still, I’m hopeful more and more women are getting the recognition they deserve. And I’m certain The Spokesman-Review is getting better at reflecting the lives of all our readers, mothers and daughters included.

, DataTimes MEMO: For information about this and other related stories, see main story under headline: Era of Change