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Introduction

During the 1970s, feminists within and outside of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) exerted ongoing pressure on its senior executives to hire and promote more women, especially in news and current affairs, and in management. The federal government regulates the airwaves and the CBC, a public broadcaster, was then a major media presence in competition with the privately-owned CTV, Global TV, and a growing number of cable TV and radio networks.[1] Although it was considered culturally progressive, the CBC’s own records show that it was lagging behind other federal institutions in changing its discriminatory attitudes towards women, despite the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW). The Commission recommended “equal opportunities” for women in the public service and Crown corporations, including the CBC.[2]

Canadian females were then the largest group suffering from discrimination in society, and both middle- and working-class women sought major reforms through grass roots political organizing. During the decade following the RCSW, hundreds of feminist organizations sprung up across the country and were eventually successful in helping to bring about appreciable reforms. [3] While these activists were predominantly white, not all were middle-class and the more politically astute were well aware of other forms of historical and contemporary discrimination in Canada and abroad.[4] In the 1970s, however, their immediate concern was gender equality for all Canadian women in law, policy, and practice from government, public service agencies, the professions and many occupations.[5]

The feminists fighting for equal opportunities in the CBC saw sexism as their main barrier to advancement. During the RCSW hearings, several women had complained about the cavalier ways in which the media in general treated women as employees, and on the air. These critics were concerned about the lack of female professionals in the studios, and the dearth of news coverage of women and the feminist movement. They also objected to the media’s demeaning and dismissive stereotypes of women, especially in commercials and drama, as oversexed or unintelligent, and destined to play a secondary role to men.[6] Following the release of the RCSW Report, activists embarked on a campaign, pressuring the CBC to hire more women and depict them realistically. They argued that female journalists, program producers, and managers must take their places in front of microphones and cameras and behind the scenes, and that hiring more women in non-traditional roles across the CBC would lead to less stereotypical portrayals of women and their issues.

Although the feminists linked female employment and portrayal, this article concerns itself mainly with their pressure on the CBC to improve the hiring, training and promotion of women in news and current affairs and in management, and how the corporation responded. Their persistence eventually led to an internal CBC task force, an equal opportunity program with a dedicated office, and, in 1980, an “affirmative action” hiring and promotions policy favouring equally qualified women over men. At the time, several federal and provincial government departments used the language of “affirmative action” for similar policies, although they lacked both set quotas and mechanisms for enforcement.[7]

My research provides the essential background to the progress of the hiring, training, and promotions policies for women in the CBC in the decade following the RCSW, and is a contribution to the few existing studies on gender and labour in broadcasting in English Canada. It tracks the importance of feminist influence on changing the CBC’s masculine, cultural attitudes towards its female employees. It combines women’s history, especially the connections between the feminist movement and women’s work, with media history, including the institutional and cultural development of broadcasting.[8] To date, the historical and more contemporary research on Canadian women in journalism has centred on the work they produced and the constraints they experienced as women in the print media, or comparatively on newspapers and in television, but women’s careers in public and private broadcasting are also rich sites for exploration.[9]

Historians have largely neglected the study of broadcasting in English Canada in general, as Mary Vipond has noted, leaving it to scholars from other disciplines to explore the ways in which federal policies shaped public broadcasting for Canadian audiences. Only more recently have researchers considered program content and cultural representation, although there is still a dearth of historical analysis on representations of women, and minorities, in broadcasting.[10] Of the limited historical research specifically dealing with gender, there are studies that examine the 1930s “women’s interest” shows on local radio stations, finding that they were firmly entrenched in a daytime, domestic sphere, which boosted their audiences.[11] At CBC radio, individual supervisors and women’s commentators mixed current events, including the latest news on women’s rights, with traditional homemaking and child-rearing fare with the intent of educating women for citizenship, during and after the Second World War.[12] Whether female broadcasters worked on women’s shows or on information programs with predominantly male audiences, they encountered discrimination because of their sex or marital status, such as the denial of permanent employment and pensions to married women in the CBC until the late 1960s.[13]

Library and Archives Canada holds many volumes of CBC papers, some of them newly released. These bear witness to the policy shifts on the status of women in the corporation, which management applied in both the English Services Division (ESD) and the French Services Division (FSD) in the 1970s.[14] The report of the 1975 CBC Task Force on the Status of Women provided detailed information on the female employees and management’s responses to their requests for change.[15] Oral history interviews with one of the CBC’s most senior women, the late Betty Zimmerman, and her papers at Carleton University, provide further insights into the women’s concerns and management’s strategies for handling their complaints.[16]

Several groups of feminist activists brought their own criticisms of the CBC’s attitudes towards women to its licensing hearings before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the country’s broadcast regulator. The CRTC could direct broadcasters regarding sexist content, but it had no power to enforce hiring practices. [17] Still, it could certainly exert its own pressure on broadcasters, and the CBC wanted to demonstrate that it was willing to consider its critics’ concerns. The president, A. W. Johnson, invited the feminists to two key seminars with the corporation’s executives in 1979 and 1980. A transcript of one seminar and an audio recording of the other provide compelling evidence of the assertive pressure from the feminists and the strategic responses from the senior managers.[18]

Resistance to Equal Opportunities at the CBC

“This agitation we’re seeing is from a few frustrated women’s libbers.” This sentiment reflected the real masculine fear of feminist influence on the CBC.[19] Androcentric resistance to hiring and promoting women was common among the managers, many of them a generation older than the female staff, and was typical of gender prejudice throughout the news media.[20] However, the RCSW had already set the stage for change. The Commission had received hundreds of complaints, many about discrimination against working women, during well-publicized hearings, and in private briefs and letters. [21] It made 167 recommendations for legal and policy changes that included “equal opportunities” for women. The Commission recommended temporary, “special” treatment of, and attention to, female job candidates and trainees in the short term to help them catch up with male employees. The official report deliberately avoided the word “quotas,” but even the term “special” treatment was contentious.[22] This approach to gender equity would have implications for women in the CBC.

At the time, Betty Zimmerman was the Director of International Relations at Head Office in Ottawa. Zimmerman, who had joined the corporation in 1959 as a radio producer, used the Commission’s recommendations to challenge her management colleagues. In an interview with researcher Alison Taylor, she recalled that during their meetings she would ask who had read the RCSW’s Report. “Men would not have read it,” Zimmerman said, nor any books on women’s inequality and the brewing feminist revolution. She told them, “Here is something that is going to affect the whole society. It is going to affect the financial end, labour, personal, interpersonal relationships, psychological, family, you name it. The whole thing is going to be changed.” But, she told Taylor, “There was no awareness” despite the fact that the CBC had extensively covered both the RCSW’s public hearings and its published report, and aired interviews with Canadian and international feminist leaders.[23]

Because of the Commission’s impact, a number of ensuing federal government initiatives also put pressure on the CBC. One of them was a report on women in the public service that recommended an “equal employment opportunity program,” including training for women in management. [24] Women comprised one-third of public service employees, as compared with only one-quarter in the CBC, which was clearly falling behind.[25] The Canada Labour Code of 1971 made equal pay for equal work a condition in federal positions where men and women worked under the same conditions, and their skills, efforts, and responsibilities were the same or similar.[26] That same year, CBC women in the FSD in Montréal started their own association, with a newsletter and research plan, as did their female colleagues in the ESD in Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, and elsewhere over the next two years. The women represented all job categories from secretaries to on-air and production staff in both information programming and entertainment, and they urged management to implement the RCSW’s recommendations.[27]

Zimmerman walked a fine line between educating her male counterparts and helping the female staff. She recalled that she tried to enlighten the men in a collegial way while encouraging the women to speak up about their circumstances. She said many men made jokes about her, and about other liberal, career-minded women, who they generally regarded as “freaks,” especially if they were also outspoken feminists, yet “another brand of cat.” She said the CBC women she knew did not use the term “feminist” in relation to themselves, and she did not know if her colleagues labeled her as such, but she had managed to build up a “great dynamic” with the men over the years. She would explain, when they asked, why many CBC women were “bitter.” As a manager, she found it difficult to be involved in the CBC women’s group in Ottawa, but she also felt the employees had to be pushed to get involved and speak out. “I felt very uncomfortable ... because maybe I was using some clout that I should not have been using ...” A number of women in the CBC were content with the working relationships they had established with their male supervisors and colleagues, she explained, and did not want to jeopardize that rapport or their jobs. Others wanted more progress. Afraid of confrontations at work, neither she nor her female colleagues felt that they should join an overtly feminist activist group outside of the CBC, which had strict rules about impartiality, especially for program producers and on-air staff. However, they could work for change from the inside, while outside feminist lobby groups reinforced their concerns.[28]

In August 1973, the CBC’s senior managers announced an internal study on the numbers, position and status of their female staff in both the ESD and FSD.[29] They also appointed a central committee on the status of women in the corporation, but gave other issues priority when it came to making decisions.[30] Finally, just before the CBC’s 1974 license renewal hearings before the CRTC, the Joint Management Committee directed Guy Coderre, the Vice-President of Administration, to meet with the central women’s committee as soon as possible to reach a consensus “in identifying the problems which exist.”[31]

At the CRTC hearings, two advocacy groups, Women for Political Action, and the Ontario Committee on the Status of Women, presented a joint brief that attracted the news media. The women had conducted a three-month monitoring project of network programs aired on CBLT, the local TV station in Toronto. On the strength of their findings, they accused the CBC of neglecting to hire and promote women for on-air jobs, and stereotyping or dismissing them in entertainment, sports, current affairs, children’s shows, commercials, and the news. According to the account in The Globe and Mail, it was the feminists’ anger at CBC News that originally spurred them into action. They declared, “CBC newscasters have consistently reported women’s stories in either a snide or a humorous way,” relegating these items to the weekend news, or treating them as lighter items at the bottom of the daily line-up. The feminists recommended an on-air Women’s News Journal with an exclusively female staff and a big enough budget to carry out its mandate.[32]

In preparing its application to the CRTC that year, the CBC noted that it was recruiting and training more journalists and emphasized its mandate of balance in TV programming for all audiences. It did not mention gender in either context, although it knew of the feminists’ brief beforehand and had already committed to improving the status of its female employees, at least on paper.[33] The following month, however, the senior managers took the “status of women” item off their meeting agendas, relegating it to McKinsey and Company, a Toronto consulting firm that they had earlier commissioned to re-organize the CBC’s head office and human resources management policies. Coderre advised that any decisions regarding female employees would therefore be premature, with the possible exceptions of non-discrimination clauses in job postings, and equalization of benefits and pension plan payments.[34]

The CBC Task Force on the Status of Women, 1975

Several weeks later, the CBC’s president, Lauren Picard, announced the CBC Task Force on the Status of Women. Catherine (Kay) MacIver, the Director of Radio in ESD, Montréal, was its chair. MacIver oversaw an English-French team of two managers (one of each sex), and three employees (a script assistant, a confidential secretary, and a male technician), plus 15 female coordinators located across the country. Their consultant was the former chair of the RCSW, Florence Bird, also known as broadcast-journalist Anne Francis. Bird later recalled, with a laugh, that she interviewed several senior, “holier than thou” executives for the study, who denied that discrimination against women existed at all in the CBC despite evidence to the contrary.[35]

The other consultant was McKinsey’s Jim Bennett, who worked with Bird, MacIver and the other CBC representatives over six intense months. They interviewed male and female managers and employees, read briefs from others, met with staff, and spoke with experts in the Public Service, the Canadian Labour Congress, private companies, and even the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in New York. They consulted about 20 percent of the entire CBC staff, including about one-third of the women, analyzed the data, and presented their results and recommendations to Picard and senior management during a two-day session in late 1974. The president gave them permission to make their findings and management’s responses available to the staff in a 200-page report, stating that the task force carried out the study “with complete independence.” In reality, MacIver and her team conducted it under management’s authority, and within the bounds of human resources criteria already established with McKinsey and Company.[36]

The task force examined several key areas: occupational representation, advancement, training, compensation, hiring practices in employment, treatment on the job, and the responsibilities of parenthood. The CBC was still a gender-segregated institution, with most women in secretarial and clerical positions so that the current equal pay legislation did not apply to them.[37] The report said that women made up 25 percent of the staff of 10,455 people. On average, they earned $10,100 per year while their male colleagues made $13,800.[38] In jobs performed by both sexes in 1973, women were in the minority as program producers (16 percent), announcers (8.8 percent) and news personnel (13 percent), most of them working in Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal.[39] Hiring policies could vary across the country, as was the case, for example, with female radio announcers in the English Services Division.[40] Promotions were slow in coming, especially in the Toronto region, where men were four to six times more likely to advance as producers, announcers, news personnel, and managers than their female counterparts. Everywhere else, the men were three times more likely to advance.[41] In fact, the CBC’s own publicity demonstrated how much a male presence dominated the airwaves; for example, all 70 hosts and co-hosts of its regional and local radio current affairs programs across the country were men.[42] It is no surprise, then, that much of the women’s unhappiness centered on the conservative attitudes of local managers towards hiring, training, and promoting them, the extent depending on the location.[43]

Even when the women received the same starting salaries on paper, they complained that their supervisors did not give them the same opportunities to advance as they gave the men. Moreover, some of them expected the women to apply their secretarial skills as well as perform their new duties, and, in some cases, altered their job descriptions so that they earned less than their male predecessors did.[44] As one unnamed woman complained to the task force, “There may be equal pay for equal job descriptions, but not for equal work.”[45]

In some areas, such as the newsrooms, union contracts did not differentiate between the sexes regarding salary scales, but other inequities prevailed. There were 67 female news reporters and editors, representing only two-and-a-half percent of all the women working for the CBC, which was slow to hire new ones.[46] In the Toronto and Montréal regions alone, there were 18 editors and reporters hired in 1973, only one of whom was a woman.[47] According to the current agreement between the CBC and the Canadian Wire Services Guild (WSG), most differences in news reporters’ salaries depended on the depth of experience or length of tenure in a particular job. The beginners, including most of the women, made $9,300 per year, and the experienced veterans, mostly men, made $15,400. The non-discrimination provisions in the contract disallowed dismissal on several grounds including “sex” and “marital status,” thereby protecting women who got married while working for the CBC. However, its hiring provisions did not protect “marital status,” allowing supervisors to reject job applications from married women, especially those with children.[48]

In its 50 recommendations, the task force did not demand a radical overhaul of the CBC’s policies. Given the mixed feedback from managers and employees, it tried to strike a balance, following the RCSW’s stance on “equal opportunities,” including “special treatment” for women, five years earlier. The task force called for a program that would include what it called “affirmative action” to improve access for women to all CBC jobs, starting with management and other key positions, and the elimination of gender segregation for both sexes in all areas. [49] In order to carry out this mandate, there would be an Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) within the human resources department, with a director, secretarial assistant, two project coordinators, a researcher analyst, an equal opportunity officer each for the ESD and FSD, plus three other representatives assigned to Engineering Headquarters, Special Services, and the regions.[50] It predicted that with its three-pronged approach comprised of new employment policies, the necessary mechanisms, and training for managers and staff, it would take three or four years to meet its goals.[51]

The OEO’s focus was on equality of opportunities for women, but its basic mission would apply “without regard to sex, religion, age, marital status or national origin – in all areas of employment within the Corporation.”[52] The recommendations did refer to quotas, but merely proposed an inventory of qualified women that the supervisors would consult before filling job vacancies. Management agreed, but was still on guard, noting that “the purpose of the list is not to force the decision maker to accept a woman but rather make him or her fully aware of any qualified female candidates that may exist,” and that a list of qualified male candidates “should obviously be developed as well.”[53] Regarding a request for up to 15 weeks of paid maternity leave, the CBC saw no reason to agree to it immediately because it might be covered under the Unemployment Insurance Act, which was being revised. New mothers would get their old jobs back upon their return to work, although not necessarily with the same CBC program or office.[54]

The task force was supposed to consider only women on staff, not those hired under contract as hosts, performers, or announcers in TV and radio current affairs. These were covered under agreements between the CBC and the Association of Canadian Radio and Television Artists (ACTRA). Their 1973 contract specified a weekly salary of $200 to $250 under minimum, 13-week, renewable contracts. Freelancers who were not on contract were paid according to their amount of airtime.[55] While it was not part of its mandate to deal with their concerns, the task force paraphrased their “widespread” complaints: “The majority of those we heard from are convinced that they are being taken advantage of in matters of pay, and that they are limited in their assignments to ‘women’s topics’ or ‘kooky stories.’”[56] It recommended that the CBC conduct a separate study of their pay, and issue a policy statement and guidelines to the program producers who hired them if the study found that gender discrimination was a concern. Management decided to wait and see how other task force recommendations on training and job counselling would fit into its human resources program once it was fully redeveloped. It also stated that it would refer the request for updated policy statements to the internal Program Policy Group for study and consideration.[57]

Betty Zimmerman was not directly involved with preparing the task force report, but recalled telling its chair, Kay MacIver, that the mark of real progress for female managers was the size of their program budgets, a complicating factor that, she recalled, MacIver did not have the time to incorporate into the study. Nevertheless, Zimmerman said that she felt vindicated by the recommendations on the status of women in the CBC because management could no longer ignore the issue. “Suddenly it was a real thing. Before that, it wasn’t a real thing.”[58]

When colleagues asked her why she did not apply to head the Office of Equal Opportunities (OEO), she told them that she had her own field as the Director of International Relations. “There are 50 to 100 excellent women in this Corporation,” she said, and senior management must look beyond the few individuals like herself whom they could regard as the “court woman” and choose an equity specialist.[59] The CBC named a prominent women’s rights advocate, Rita Cadieux, as the OEO’s first director.[60]

From “Equal Opportunities” to “Affirmative Action” at the CBC

By 1977, the federal government had implemented over 80 percent of the RCSW’s recommendations.[61] That year, it passed the Human Rights Act, which gave women further protection. Among its prohibited grounds of discrimination were sex (including sexual harassment and pregnancy), marital status, and disability, and it included provisions for “equal pay for work of equal value.”[62] The CBC’s 1977 employment policy stated that opportunities in employment and career development were “available to everyone, regardless of such considerations as race, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, sex or sexual orientation, or marital status.” Failure to follow the new directive amounted to “exclusion of valuable human resources” and an “under-utilization” of the affected employee or employee groups, which management would rectify with “corrective measures.” Human resources managers were responsible for making sure that each supervisor who hired, trained, and promoted staff followed this policy.[63]

In 1978, the CBC was again up for license renewal before the CRTC. In mapping out its programming priorities before the hearing, the CBC emphasized national unity, regionalism, and Canadian content on the air, and did not mention women as a constituent group. This omission led feminist critics to complain to the CRTC that the CBC was not living up to its mandate as a public broadcaster to represent all Canadians, which should include women and their issues. They pointed out that, according to the 1968 Broadcasting Act, the CBC was to “enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social, and economic fabric of Canada,” and that should mean transmitting the importance of female citizens and their accomplishments to its national and local audiences. They were not convinced that the CBC was doing enough to improve women’s employment status or on-air representation. With its own media monitoring study of the CBC’s English-language services in hand, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), an independent lobby group, stated that if the CBC hired more women in news, programming and management, the portrayal of women on the air would improve.[64] The new CBC president, A.W. Johnson promised the CRTC that he would hear the feminist out, and organized a two-day seminar with them in Toronto in February 1979, along with a number of senior and middle managers of both sexes from head office, public relations, and programming.[65] The seminar was a turning point in the CBC’s slow track record on equity.

Johnson’s invitation to the women’s groups was part of an overall strategy for responding to a number of different organizations that had intervened at the CRTC hearings with criticism of the CBC. Management was concerned that it was a much-misunderstood institution, losing relevance and contact with politicians and the public, and, with advancing Americanization, privatization, audience fragmentation, and technological advances, at risk of losing audience support. Zimmerman was on the CBC’s study team for this strategic outreach effort. She also chaired the organizing committee for the women’s seminar, which included Helen McVey, the new Director of the OEO.[66] Updated documents from the OEO in Zimmerman’s papers show that by January 1979, the CBC had initiated gender-inclusive recruiting policies, was considering “affirmative action” as suggested in the 1975 task force report, and was holding sexism awareness sessions for supervisors. But it had not yet rectified all its equal pay anomalies, finalized its job interview guidelines, produced an inventory of current CBC women, dealt with women on contract, or come close to equal opportunities in English or French news or current affairs.[67] Among senior managers, there was also strong caution, skepticism, and resistance to any outside “coercive” influence on the CBC’s independence.[68]

Zimmerman and the other women’s seminar organizers decided that the senior and middle managers still needed a basic primer on the nature of sexism, and how it related to both employment and programming, so they engaged several academics to provide it. [69] Then it was the turn of the invited feminist groups to point out how little progress the CBC had made in all aspects of female inclusion since 1975, using abbreviated versions of their briefs to the CRTC, plus further comments. Regarding its equal opportunities hiring policy, Lynn McDonald of NAC noted that the CBC had two coordinator positions in the OEO, but had filled only one of them. It needed both, she said, and any other staff needed to make sure the office could carry out its mandate effectively.[70] Sue Findlay of the federal Advisory Council on the Status of Women noted some increase in the number of female hosts, reporters, and commentators in news and current affairs since 1974, citing the OEO’s own studies. None of the 12 CBC foreign correspondents were female, Findlay said; moreover, the latest data did not include the women hired on contract as producers and in on-air positions.[71] She declared that hiring women was essential to accuracy in female portrayal for “… the female image must be formed by making full use of the insights and understanding of women themselves.”[72] Sylvia Spring, a feminist filmmaker who represented Vancouver Status of Women (VSW), declared, “Although women may not be barred from applying for any job now, we have enough evidence to suggest that it is still very difficult for women to get beyond some men’s personal biases.”[73] Spring also suggested that the CBC add “women’s issues” to their roster of specialty reporting beats on the national news in order to engender “intelligent, in-depth discussion of events and issues rather than the generally combative approach taken so far.”[74] Ruth Hinkley of the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC) said female managers, who were not unionized, should receive “equal pay for work of equal value,” and that they, and the women producers, should have more training.”[75] After these presentations, Johnson promised to bring their concerns to the CBC management boards and the Board of Directors.[76]

In fact, CBC strategists had already formulated Johnson’s stance towards the feminists before the seminar. An internal document anticipated their criticisms. The approved responses emphasized the importance of creative and journalistic independence in programming and production, and an understanding that, regardless of policy, changing sexist attitudes takes time. Therefore, any commitments Johnson made to the feminist groups must be effective and feasible in the short-term, so that no one could dismiss the seminar as an exercise in tokenism.[77] After the seminar, he reaffirmed the priority of its goal to place more women in decision-making positions. The directives addressed the importance of equitable female representation on the air rather than more hiring, but also included a promise to establish “social affairs specialists” as reporters in English and French network TV news “to ensure comprehensive coverage of issues of concern to women.”[78]

Management planned a follow-up women’s seminar for June 1980. An unsigned document, apparently preliminary notes written two months beforehand, tracked the slow progress of the equal opportunity program for women in the ESD since the 1975 task force. The writer noted some success in ensuring equal pay, increasing the number of women among radio and TV program producers, and in news and current affairs, which the writer designated as a “non-traditional” category for women. While 17 percent of managers were women, less than one percent of them were in senior positions compared to 12 percent of the men. Furthermore, the overall increase of women in the CBC was only seven percent in four years, and at 29 percent, still well under the Canadian labour force average of 40 percent. The writer also recounted continuing resistance among line managers responsible for hiring at the local and regional levels, which might have been slowing the equal opportunities program down. Some men still balked at hiring women, especially in non-traditional positions, or expressed fears that there were now too many of them in some units, when in earlier years, no one complained about having too many men. Unconscious gender biases that questioned women’s need for jobs in the first place, their willingness to be mobile, and their ability to work in dangerous areas were still apparent, along with “a sense of threat. The upwardly mobile woman is seen as a competitor.” The same document mentioned that Peter Herrndorf, Vice-president and General Manager, (ESD) , had announced an “affirmative action” mandate for the coming year to put “special emphasis” on identification, promotion, and training, especially of women who had potential as executive producers, or in senior management.[79]

In May 1980, the CBC sent an invitation to a follow-up seminar to the same feminist women’s groups that had attended the first one, but with an agenda that primarily highlighted the corporation’s updates.[80] Perhaps in preparation, management send its “top priority” goals with a progress report on equal opportunities, a non-sexist program policy, and gender-neutral language guidelines, to senior colleagues and staff. However, the progress report noted that internal seminar discussions combining equal opportunity with portrayal of women did not work well because the attendees found them confusing, and the OEO would address those topics separately from then on. There would also be a separate coordinator for the Portrayal of Women, who would sit on the CRTC’s new task force on sex-role stereotyping.[81]

Yet, Herrndorf was very aware of the link between hiring and promoting female staff and improving the portrayal of women in all programming at the CBC. His handwritten notes, created around the time of the 1980 seminar, said, “...can’t change portrayal until we seed women throughout the organization in high leverage jobs and high profile jobs (role models for others).” The goal was “a substantial increase over the next three years of women in key or influential roles,” especially as executive producers of programs, and in general management. He wrote that all senior officers were going to be responsible “for identifying women of high potential and working out a specific program of career development.” He wanted to see them in a national training course in one of two streams, management or production, with a goal of 20-25 women in each. The intent was to better prepare them to face hiring boards and succeed at their work. His notes also emphasized the importance of managers setting an equitable gender tone in their units, and sensitivity training, especially in sports, for producers, commentators, and reporters, perhaps to end what he described as “machobabble.” He further noted the importance of “increased” coverage of women’s issues in news and current affairs. As for progress to date, he listed a number of senior female managers, including Trina McQueen, a former reporter who was in charge of TV network programming, and Margaret Lyons, director of programming in AM radio.[82]

The 1980 women’s seminar again included leading, outspoken feminists such as Lynn McDonald of NAC, Doris Anderson, the former editor of Chatelaine magazine and the new head of the federal Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Sylvia Spring of VSW, and Ruth Germaine of the NCWC. The CBC managers strived to persuade the women its strategy on equal opportunities was working well. McDonald of NAC countered their account of progress, however, using the CBC’s own statistics for the period between December 1975 and March 1980. The number of female technicians increased from one to two percent; managers from nine and one-half percent to 14 percent; producers from 16.4 percent to 19.7 percent and announcers from 12.6 percent to 16 percent. “These are really very discouraging statistics. We really want to hear what are you going to do about it constructively?” The CBC executives responded by committing to “affirmative action” through permanent hiring of promising female contract staff, and training and promotions of women already on staff to executive positions in production and management. In other words, they wanted to groom women already known within the CBC.[83] While this strategy reflected the equality opportunity recommendations of the CBC Task Force, and the “special” treatment recommendations of the RCSW Report, it did not open up the corporation to new female faces and voices.

Nevertheless, because it favoured special treatment for equally qualified women competing with men, the new policy was definitely contentious among some of the staff; for example, the managers at the 1980 seminar did not tell the feminists how divisive the promised appointment of a social affairs reporter had been in the national English news service.[84] When the first shortlist included a man whose credentials were superior to those of any other applicant, Mike Daigneault, Director of News and Current Affairs, ordered a wider search, despite objections from the news department. The CBC then hired Marguerite McDonald, a rising star within the corporation.[85] She had come prepared to the interview with a long list of story ideas, most of them to do with women’s issues.[86] Although McDonald was to specialize in that area, that was not her only task. The social affairs news beat would include “controversial” issues such as racism and homosexuality.[87]

When Spring suggested at the seminar that McDonald should sensitize her colleagues to feminist issues, Daigneault disagreed. “I do not see her as a newsroom conscience. I don’t think she can do that. I think it places an impossible load on her.” Sensitization, he argued, should come from directives to journalists during the daily news story meetings and from other women, including those who were assignment editors, “some of whom are not at all afraid to be known as feminists.”[88]

During the day-long seminar, the CBC managers claimed progress in female hires, promotions, and news sources, noting by name the women who had recently joined long-time journalists Adrienne Clarkson, Barbara Frum, and a few other women as on-air hosts, news and sports journalists, program producers, and invited experts.[89] They included Marguerite McDonald’s counterpart at Radio Canada, Danielle Levasseur, and Susan Reisler, the CBC’s first female foreign correspondent, who was in Washington, DC. [90] The previous year, Zimmerman became head of Radio Canada International, the highest management position among CBC women at the time, but she told interviewer Jean Bruce that the corporation had not yet hired and trained enough women who could soon work their way into other senior management positions.[91]

The CBC’s president, A. W. Johnson, formally announced the “affirmative action” policy in a memo to CBC staff a few months later, explaining “at the very minimum women must now be given the advantage over men when judged to be ‘equally qualified.’”[92] A separate pamphlet explained that it would be a temporary “corrective” program, not a permanent policy.[93] Local and regional managers identified 360 female employees across the country who merited training for more senior positions in both management and programming. There was some urgency to helping them reach their potential because, according to Sylvia Moss, the Director of Career Opportunity (ESD), “Some highly talented women have left the Corporation in search of recognition, more experience or a better working environment.”[94] Senior management in Toronto wanted regional managers to do the initial “affirmative action” and on-the-job training, using a special fund to hire, for example, program producers on contracts. The plan was to develop them into staff “program officers, production managers, directors of TV and radio, future regional directors, key network producers, area/executive producers, etc.”[95] However, the CBC’s internal recruitment drive also noted the importance of mobility as a factor in developing and promoting women, a potential barrier for those who were married or with dependents.[96]

Nevertheless, there were some noticeable improvements in the numbers of women on the air. The following year, a consultants’ report noted that 30 percent of the hosts and reporters on English television news and current affairs programs were female.[97] By that time, Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finlay, formerly of CTV, were co-hosting The Journal, the flagship current affairs show on the national TV network, and ten more women were reporting for national news programs from several cities across the country, plus London, England. Their presence in CBC news and current affairs was still controversial in some quarters. A columnist in the Toronto Star, Roy Shields, wrote that TV “brought out the worst” in most female broadcasters. “It has something to do with the voice. When women try to engage in a hard-hitting interview they somehow sound hysterical. They always remind me that I haven’t taken out the garbage.” He quickly avowed that he was not being sexist, just anticipating a male movement for equality on TV before it became a medium “where men will be reduced to typists.”[98] His comments were a sobering example of the opposition women still faced in the media despite the gains they had made at the CBC.

Conclusion

In the early 1970s, CBC women who wanted accelerated female hiring, equal pay, and better promotions had essentially one beacon to inspire them, and that was the Report of The Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Its “equal opportunities” approach, with “special treatment” for women, was groundbreaking for the time, but stopped short of inspiring true gender equality. The Report of the CBC Task Force on the Status of Women demonstrated that its female employees were clearly ready for change, although their own “equal opportunities” strategy, including “affirmative action,” took five years for management to accept. Changes in federal laws and policies, and the feminist lobby groups that made persistent complaints to the CRTC and the CBC, eventually influenced the corporation’s executives to advance women in management, and in news and current affairs. The feminists’ strategy was to demand equal opportunities for women in the CBC while pointing out that hiring, training, and promoting more of them would remedy sexist and stereotypical portrayals of women on the air. The CBC executives accepted their argument, and did try to deal with both issues at the same time, until their dual approach proved too cumbersome.

The archived CBC and Zimmerman documents reveal that conservative-minded local and regional supervisors were the most resistant to the presence of women in news and current affairs, and in management. However, senior executives at the national level were also cautious and slow to make improvements, mainly because they did not want to lose autonomy over the process to the feminists inside and outside of the CBC.

The oral history interviews with Betty Zimmerman, with her insider’s view, put both the management’s decisions and the feminists’ demands into context. The strides the CBC made in one decade were circumscribed by several factors: the handling of the feminists’ demands within the context of audience and public relations, and their own priorities, such as advancing women who were known within the CBC, rather than attracting newcomers. Their “affirmative action” policy did not have quotas, which they resisted, but they did start training and promoting more women with potential, which made a difference, at least to the gender mix on the air and behind the studio glass.

The establishment of the CBC’s equal opportunities policy during the 1970s lay the groundwork for future employment equity programs, including policies designed to prevent sexual and personal harassment, and strategies for hiring more Indigenous peoples, racialized minorities, and people with disabilities. My further studies on these goals will incorporate oral histories and the written personal narratives of TV and radio journalists, program producers, and their managers, archived documentation and media accounts, among other sources. Regardless of whether they were hired and promoted through “equal opportunities,” “affirmative action,” “equality in employment,” or another regime, women of all identities and diversities expected to benefit. Individually, the women who entered broadcasting after the 1970s had different experiences in the field, in the studio, or at their desks because of many factors. Information about these experiences will provide historians and other scholars with a more fully rounded picture of these women’s careers and the media environments in which they operated.