Born: 18 October 1909, United States
Died: 29 December 1997
Country most active: International
Also known as: Helen Milbank
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about sexist barriers is just how easily they can be removed by the gatekeepers holding them in place. In 1939, Helen Kirkpatrick applied for a reporter job with the Chicago Daily News. Owner Frank Knox told her that “We don’t have women on the staff.” She responded, “I can’t change my sex. But you can change your policy.” Knox hired her, and Kirkpatrick became a war correspondent during World War II and the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to the men…
Women journalists faced exclusion from war zones on the assumption that women were incapable of handling such conditions, ignoring the countless nurses who had been doing so for centuries. The flimsiest of excuses popped up to justify the initial banning of all women reporters from U.K.- and U.S.-controlled battle zones during World War II—they didn’t have proper women’s restrooms. When Helen Kirkpatrick’s editor was told that women didn’t belong in fighting zones because they couldn’t dig latrines, he responded that Kirkpatrick “could beat anybody in the room in that particular activity.”