Your Woman Friend in the West: Women Broadcasters and the Cold War

Abstract

Radio played a paradoxical role in the Cold War, embraced both as a key tool for propaganda warfare as well as for promoting peace and understanding. Women, too, played paradoxical roles both in radio and on the world stage. In this paper we will attempt to explore these intersecting paradoxes in a transnational perspective by focusing on The International Association of Women in Radio and Television, founded in 1951. This international network of women provides insights into how women broadcasters viewed radio and themselves in the global ideological struggles of the Cold War. Exploring the organization's international networking practices, its positioning within international women's movements, as well as their conceptions of the relationship between women and radio, we show how in each of these arenas, despite a belief in a universal womanhood and striving for a global organization, the organization can be seen falling into the emerging Western camp of the Cold War.