Food Meets Feminism: UCF Professor Kimberly Voss on Newspaper Women’s Pages

Today, we’re exploring a brief yet important chapter of America’s culinary history. Between the 1940s and 1970s, most major American newspapers had a women’s page. Among the sections devoted to sports, business and so on, there was a section devoted to so-called women’s issues: family, fashions, furnishings and of course food.University of Central Florida journalism professor Kimberly Voss, PhD, researched women’s pages for her book The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community. The book was published in 2014, but it remains as fascinating as ever.In this conversation, Dr. Voss explains how newspaper women’s sections came to be—and why they went away. She also shares why these pages mattered, how their editors were viewed by the rest of the newsroom and how women’s sections editors paved the way for food writers of today.Related episodes:Zora Neale Hurton’s Foodie LifeCelebrating Grande Dame Chef Edna LewisPeach Cobbler is in a League of its OwnTwo USF Professors Offer a Crash Course in American Food HistoryMarjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ “Cross Creek Cookery” Turns 80: Reflections from Food Writer Jeff Houck