Sex Role Stereotyping in Early Broadcast History: The Career of Mary Margaret McBride

Abstract

One of the enduring myths in broadcast history is that a woman's voice is not as agreeable as a man's to a radio or television audience. Broadcasters, past and present, have mentioned the higher pitch of women's voices, the greater artificiality of women's voices or women's lack of authority in commentating, interviewing, or selling products on the air.[1] Stated briefly, the myth claims a natural on-the-air superiority of men, thereby rationalizing the exclusion of women as authoritative voice-overs on commercials, as commentators and as news announcers. The myth poses intriguing questions for the historian. When and how did the myth arise? Why has it had such vitality? Historically, have women been disadvantaged in announcing, commentating, interviewing, and selling products on the air? If so, why? In seeking the answers to these questions, I selected a radio broadcaster, Mary Margaret McBride, whose career is not atypical of women broadcasters of her era, and which offers significant insight into the development of the myth and its general acceptance by American society during the period 1934-1954. Any analysis of the myth of female inferiority and male superiority in broadcast history must begin with the phenomenal growth of radio broadcasting in the 1920's and the 1930's. In 1922, Americans owned 60,000 radio sets and seven years later that figure had grown to about 10,000,000 radio sets. By 1930, the total number of radio families in the United States numbered 9,640,000 with a total listening audience of 41,000,000. More than 80 percent of the total number of families owning radios listened to them daily.[2] This audience soon became an important national market for products and services. However, statistics reveal only the quantitative dimension of radio's expansion. Radio's qualitative impact is more difficult to