Throughout history, women have often been underrepresented in the newsroom and in conversations shaping journalism and the media - which itself reflects missing women's voices in public debate more broadly.

While significant progress toward equality and inclusion in the media has been made, in too many sectors and in too many places, women’s voices remain absent.

At this year’s IPI World Congress and Media Innovation Festival, three in five speakers were women.  It’s a striking figure — and a stark contrast to much of IPI’s early history.

Using materials from IPI’s analogue archive, we revisited 41 years of General Assembly programming, from 1952 to 1992, to trace women’s presence on stage and revealed a snapshot of female visibility, and absence, in media discourse over time.

General Assemblies are the annual decision-making meetings of IPI, traditionally held during the IPI World Congress, where members from around the world elect the organisation’s leadership, vote on key policies, and review IPI’s work. They serve as the institute’s highest governing forum and a historic gathering of global editors and journalists shaping the future of press freedom.

Looking back at four decades of these meetings is not just an exercise in institutional history. It offers a window onto the wider world in which they took place. What we see on IPI’s stages mirror, in miniature, the broader struggles for women’s representation in public life.

And progress is fragile. Around the world, leaders who openly disparage women are again finding their way into power. Some politicians and influencers would rather see women in the kitchen than on stage sharing their thoughts.

This online exhibition pays homage to the remarkable women who paved the way, and is also a reminder that progress should not be taken for granted.

Exceptions to the rule

In the early years of the IPI General Assemblies, female speakers were notable in their absence. While delegates’ wives were catered for with annual “Ladies’ Programmes” (until 1979), and women certainly typed up the programmes and reports, very few women spoke on stage in a professional capacity. Those who did were exceptions to the rule. 

This was not unusual for the time, when media and all other social and political authorities were almost exclusively male-dominated.  

Early female speakers included well-known international figures, such as the first — and so far only — female prime ministers of two countries: Indira Gandhi of India (who spoke in 1966) and Golda Meir of Israel (1973).

The very first female speaker appeared in 1955: Austrian born French reporter Dominique Auclères, who spoke on the panel ‘Foreign News and the Reader’ (13 May 1955, Copenhagen). Auclères was a novelist and journalist, a reporter at Le Figaro from 1945 to 1975, and also translated German literature into French.

Pioneering politicians also made an appearance, such as French feminist lawyer Simone Veil, who addressed the first IPI General Assembly in Latin America (1987), and Hong Kong democratic leader and former journalist Emily Lau (1992). 

Perhaps less well known outside their own countries were the journalists and publishers whose professional and regional impact is indisputable. 

It was Greek journalist and publisher Eleni Vlachou (Helen Vlachos) who spoke most often: eight times from 1968 to 1985. Vlachou closed down her paper Kathimerini in 1967 in protest against the military dictatorship, and published an open letter to the international media in IPI Report, IPI’s flagship publication for many decades. Posthumously named IPI World Press Hero in 2000, Vlachou addressed the Congress as an authority on resisting authoritarianism. 

Other regular faces on the IPI stage included Hong Kong businesswoman and newspaper proprietor Aw Sian, chair of the Executive Board from 1971 to 1972 and first IPI female board member and first female chairperson; Christina Jutterström, editor-in-chief of Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter; and British journalist Rosemary Righter, a fierce critic of the United Nations.

The first female academic was Nermin Abadan in 1964, a Turkish academic, lawyer, sociologist of immigration and women's rights who, at the time of writing (November 2025), is still well known in her home country and 104 years old. 

Abadan was followed by Hélène Ahrweiler, the first female director of the Sorbonne, and Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny, under-secretary-general at the United Nations Public Information Department

Ladies' Programmes

During the 70s, delegates’ wives were catered for with annual “Ladies’ Programmes”, which included tea ceremonies, fashion shows, visits to museums, children hospitals, childcare centers and arts and crafts shows, practice of flower arrangements, dinners and lunches, and sightseeing. In some cases, such as in 1971, they were hairdressers listed and available "at the disposal of the ladies". Later on, from the 80s, there were renamed to "Programme for accompanying persons".

Photos: Jerusalem 1973, Kyoto 1974, Helsinki 1971, Oslo 1977.

1973: First General Assembly panel on women in journalism
News and comments in women's and family journals

"On the one hand there is a women's press which is completely stereotyped and where the word 'woman' has the same extremely restricted and limited sense as in earliest times, but in a more modern form; on the other hand there is the press of current affairs in the broadest and total sense of the word, which creams off those women who want to be treated as complete individuals."

— IPI Report, July/August 1973.