The Battle for Acceptance

For decades, the Parliamentary Press Gallery excluded woman members. It was an old boys’ club and it took strong, independent women like Genevieve Lipsett Skinner to break down the barriers. She had been a reporter in Winnipeg, a lawyer, a member of the Political  Equality League  and one-time political candidate. She moved to Ottawa and began writing for newspapers in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. She was a founding member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club, whose aim was to support female journalists. Finally, in 1922, she was accepted as a member of the club, the first female member. I discuss that era with Richard Clarkin, narrator of my just-released audiobook, Power, Prime Ministers and the Press, a history of the reporters who covered Canadian prime ministers for the past 150 years.

Canadian Women’s Press Club