Woman Series
Collection Summary
The Woman Series Collection consists of 197 episodes of the Woman series produced by WNED in Buffalo, New York from 1972-1977. Woman was a half-hour public affairs talk show covering issues of interest to women. The first season, which aired locally, was hosted by Samantha Dean. From 1973 - 1977, PBS syndicated the series, and producer Sandra Elkin became the show’s host. Each episode focused on a single topic with featured guest discussants. Guests included well-known and lesser-known activists, journalists, writers, scholars, lawyers, artists, psychologists, doctors and others such as Gloria Steinem, editor and co-founder of Ms. Magazine; Dorothy Pitman Hughes, African American activist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine; Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique; Florynce Kennedy, founder of the National Feminist Party; Margaret Sloan, co-founder of the National Black Feminist Organization; Karen DeCrow, then president of the National Organization for Women; Margaret Dunkle of the Project on the Status of Women for the Association of American Colleges; and Ruth Miller of the Buffalo Planned Parenthood Association. Topics discussed on the show included women in sports, the Equal Rights Amendment, sexuality, marriage, women’s health, divorce, the Women’s Liberation Movement, motherhood, and ageism, among others.
Collection Background
The Woman Series was contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) by WNED during the first major AAPB digitization project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2012. Once digitized, the show’s producer and host Sandra Elkin assisted AAPB archivists in cataloging the digitized collection.
