The Satellite Sex: The Media and Women’s Issues in English Canada, 1966-1971

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.