Vivian Smith worked at the Globe for fourteen years, rising from the ranks from copy editor to national beats editor. After having two children, she dropped back to feature writing. A few years later, she accepted a buyout that the Globe was offering her. Smith then moved with her family from Toronto, Ontario to Victoria, British Colombia. She is now a freelance writer, who is paid little amount, irregularly, with no benefits or vacation pay. Her income dropped two thirds, but she does now have more free time for her family (Smith, 4). Smith’s novel addresses how despite high numbers of enrollment in journalism programs in North America, women still remain underrepresented in high level positions in the newspaper industry. For example, At Carleton…show more content… Although, after the process of interviewing Smith discovered “much more than gender is at play when women print journalists in Canada decide to leave the jobs they love” (199). Of course, a large portion of women are seen leaving their careers due to family life yet, Smith continues, “gender on its own does not appear to determine these women’s newsrooms experiences and production as cultural “outsiders”” (201). Other social characteristics affected these women’s newspaper careers. These women’s career paths appear to be influenced in numerous ways by other characteristics such as class, age, parenthood status, physical ability and race that intersect with gender. Jen Gerson of the Calgary Herald noted, “So the only way to begin a newspaper career today … was to be wealthy enough to emerge from a post-graduate program debt-free and to be able to make it through the first few years of relatively low-paid, low-security contracts with lots of support” (111). Once again, various characteristics such as class and status prove to shape the careers of journalists. I agree with Smith’s final conclusions that more than gender will affect a journalist’s career and male journalists need to be asked the same questions to have the full
