Vatsikopoulos, Helen: Australian women war reporters (review of Baker)

Vatsikopoulos, Helen

Australian Women War Reporters review: how female journalists made it to battle‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 2015

Reviews Jeannine Baker’s Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam.

Australian women journalists might have been granted equal pay back in 1917 but it would be decades before they were allowed to report the same stories as men. As Baker points out, women were expected to leave the hard news of war and strategy to the men and to report on the softer stories, the women’s angle and all from a woman’s point of view.

Baker delves into military archives, personal papers and libraries and finds that most of the women fought a hard battle indeed – not against the enemy but their own editors, newspaper proprietors and the Australian Military for access to the war zones.

Other reviews: Sarah Dempster in The Australian; Samaya Borom in Right Now; Readings bookshop. An excerpt from the book. Phillip Adams talks with the author and ABC correspondent, Ginny Stein. Another review from Carolyn Holbrook in Inside Story; Carolyn Holbrook is one of Honest History’s distinguished supporters and a member of the Honest History committee.

Honest History has lots of material about war correspondents, including female ones.

 

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