Voices Of Women

How New York City and a quirky magazine helped

In 1999, I was invited to be on a panel that changed my life.

When I was little, I dreamed of being an artist, one that could use her work to speak about things that I thought were important. Growing up during Watergate was key, very influential. In fact the whole period of my youth was influential. Woodstock, hippies, assassinations, Vietnam, Civil Rights Marches, Women’s Libbers. But strangely, it never occurred to me that my drawing had anything to do with being a woman. I just wanted to draw. When I became a professional, I was aware I was a minority in my chosen field of New Yorker cartooning, but I was just glad I got into the magazine. I didn’t see myself, and still don’t, as a woman cartoonist. I am a cartoonist who happens to be a woman.

It wasn’t until I was invited to be on the panel that I started to think about gender more personally. The American Association of Editorial Cartooning invited me to participate on a panel about women in cartooning. I was not a member of the AAEC — I believe they asked me because they couldn’t find enough of us! I had done political cartoons for The New Yorker, but the AAEC was mostly newspaper cartoonists; at the time, there were only two women who were professional (it’s still that way).

Over the course of preparing to be on this panel— researching the burning question as to why are there not more women doing this — I became fascinated. I decided to look into who came before me. What I…