‘Surveying value in women's work: a view through the eyes of the International Council of Women's broadcasting committee 1935–1960’

The International Council of Women (ICW, founded 1888) is one of the oldest international women’s organisations with a long interest in emerging media. The ICW’s broadcasting committee repeatedly surveyed their members for information and compiled the data into reports that it then distributed among its members. Such surveys provide insights into the evolving visions of broadcasting within the international women’s movement and specifically an organisation such as the ICW. In this paper, we analyse ICW surveys and reports to consider the way women’s work in broadcasting was discussed and valued. We explore what women felt was valuable and valued in their work, as well as what value the ICW saw in women’s work in broadcasting, and what tactics they sought to develop to improve women’s positions within the broadcasters themselves. We conceptualise these surveys as reflecting ‘institutional activism’ undertaken by women well-embedded within their institutions, and the media tactics developed from that position. However, while the surveys and reports offer us rich insights into the agendas of women’s activism in broadcasting, they did not coalesce into a coherent or unified strategy. This has in turn contributed to archival silence and historiographical silence on women’s institutional activism in broadcasting in this period.