Bay Area Feminist Newspaper, The Women’s Page and The Second Page, 1970-1971

The Women's Page It Ain't Me Babe

Periodical

The Women’s Page and The Second Page, a Bay Area feminist newspaper run issued in California between 1970 and 1971, documents early women’s liberation as a fight over childcare, domestic violence, workplace subordination, and the relation between feminism and anti-capitalist politics. The group begins with The Women’s Page as a section in It Ain’t Me Babe for July 23–August 5, 1970 and continues through five numbered issues, a supplement, and The Second Page no. 6, with articles including “Day Care?,” “they call it ‘groovy’ I call it obscene,” “family conflicts,” “Women Who Get Beaten,” “Tactics of the Enemy: How They Drive Us Out,” “The Grand Hotel,” and the Bank of America pieces “The Lady Rises At The Bank” and “Working At The Bank.” Contributor lines naming Pam Edwards, Pam Fishman, Pat Mialoq, Lynn O’Connor, Barbara Alpert, Pat McMahon, Faith Johnson, and Geri Shifs place the papers within Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco's feminist print collective designed for women after drawing attention to women's exclusion from antiwar, civil rights, and New Left institutions organized around male leadership and male priorities.

The Women’s Page and The Second Page. California, 1970–1971. Archive of 9 folded tabloid-format newsprint issues and issue sections, each approximately 11.5 x 8.5 inches folded.

[1&2] The Women’s Page. Section from It Ain’t Me Babe. California, July 23–August 5, 1970. Two copies of the founding section under the boxed THE WOMEN’S PAGE masthead, marking the paper’s emergence from the Bay Area alternative press.

[3] The Women’s Page. No. 1. California, October 1, 1970. Prints Barbara Alpert’s “Tactics of the Enemy: How They Drive Us Out,” on clerical labor, office hierarchy, and women’s exclusion from better-paid work.

[4] The Women’s Page. No. 2. California, November 18, 1970. Carries “Day Care?” and “they call it ‘groovy’ I call it obscene,” linking childcare politics to feminist criticism of sexual degradation in radical and campus culture.

[5] The Women’s Page. No. 3. California, December 18, 1970. Includes Pam Edwards’s “family conflicts” and Alison Anthony’s “Women Who Get Beaten,” two early pieces confronting domestic violence in direct legal and economic terms.

[6] The Women’s Page. Supplement no. 2. California, December 18, 1970. Supplement to no. 3, issued alongside the December 18, 1970 number.

[7] The Women’s Page. No. 4. California, February 18, 1971. Issue continuing coverage of work, institutions, and political direction in articles and editorials.

[8] The Women’s Page. No. 5. California, April–May 1971. Contains Faith Johnson’s “The Grand Hotel,” a first-person account of secretarial labor, dress codes, and managerial control in San Francisco hotel work.

[9] The Second Page. No. 6. California, November 1971. Led by “The Lady Rises At The Bank” and “Working At The Bank,” on title ceilings, training barriers, and clerical confinement at Bank of America; the issue also states that it is “not a feminist publication,” making the paper’s political break explicit.

The nine issues and sections print articles on childcare, domestic violence, women's clerical and service labor, and employment. Moderate toning, mailing folds, corner creasing; overall good condition. The run traces a shift from the July–August 1970 It Ain’t Me Babe section through The Women’s Page nos. 1–5 and the December 1970 supplement to The Second Page no. 6 (November 1971), where the statement that it is “not a feminist publication” marks a break in editorial position and importantly reveals the consequences of the debates surrounding second wave feminism as "anti-man," by critics.

Item #23225

Price: $450.00