Canada's feminist columnists are disappearing from newsrooms
Canadian newsrooms have spent two decades promising to diversify their opinion pages, yet feminist columnists keep vanishing from mastheads. From the Postmedia restructuring that gutted the Calgary Herald to Torstar cuts that hollowed out the Toronto Star's culture desks, women who write critically about power are treated as expendable in every downturn. Feminist analysis now survives mostly on podcasts, independent newsletters, and publications like this one, while legacy outlets rely on male generalists.
Australian readers in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth will recognise the parallels. Both countries share similar media ownership patterns, population sizes, and reliance on publicly funded broadcasters. Both have watched press groups merge, lay off hundreds of journalists, and quietly retire the bylines of women who challenged editorial orthodoxies. What follows is a look at how the Canadian media landscape fails to hire and retain feminist columnists, where Australia diverges, and what readers on both sides of the Pacific can do about it.
The structural collapse of Canadian newsrooms
The Canadian media sector has lost roughly a quarter of its journalism jobs since 2008. Postmedia's 2017 acquisition of Sun Media papers triggered buyouts that disproportionately affected columnists writing about gender and reproductive rights. The pattern repeated at the Star, the Globe and Mail, and the CBC, where editors told staff to "consolidate" beats, effectively erasing dedicated feminist coverage. When a culture desk is cut, the columnist covering abortion access or pay equity is rarely reassigned.
Editorial budgets now punish slower, reflective writing. Feminist columnists publish pieces requiring reporting and context, which makes them expensive relative to a viral tweet thread. The shift toward cheap opinion has hollowed out the freelance pipeline that supported women writers between staff contracts. Many write for free on Substacks while applying for Canada Council grants, a model that excludes anyone without the financial cushion to wait out a six-month jury process.
Pay gaps and the freelance trap
Even before the layoffs, gender pay gaps in Canadian journalism were stark. The Canadian Association of Journalists has documented that women writers earn consistently less than male counterparts across nearly every beat, and freelance rates have not kept pace with inflation. A 1,200-word feminist opinion piece might pay AUD-equivalent of $400 to $600 at a national paper, while a male sports-business columnist often commands double. The disparity becomes structural when feminist writers accept lower rates to keep their clips alive, training newsrooms to undervalue their labour.
A pitch to a Sydney editor will meet the same response: "We don't have the budget for commentary." Australia's Freelance Jungle and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance have organised around rate cards and collective bargaining in ways Canadian unions have not. The Canadian Media Guild has leverage over staff contracts but little over freelance rates, leaving feminist columnists to negotiate alone.
Tokenism and editorial gatekeeping
The most common defence Canadian publishers offer is that they "have a feminist columnist," as though one byline equals a diverse opinion section. Tokenism has long been the default: hire a single woman of colour to cover race, a single queer writer to cover sexuality, and a single feminist to cover everything from workplace harassment to celebrity culture. The tokenised columnist becomes the in-house expert on every issue affecting women, while male colleagues are allowed to specialise.
Gatekeeping also extends to race. Indigenous journalists in Canada, particularly First Nations, Inuit, and Métis writers, are chronically underrepresented in legacy media despite making up roughly five per cent of the population. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander journalists remain a small minority in mainstream newsrooms, although NITV, IndigenousX, and the ABC's Indigenous department have created parallel spaces. Canadian publishers have largely failed to build those parallel structures, leaving Indigenous feminist writers to launch their own publications or contribute to American outlets.
Online harassment drives women out
The single biggest reason feminist columnists leave Canadian mastheads is the harassment that follows publication. Women writing about trans rights, sexual violence, or reproductive autonomy face coordinated abuse campaigns, doxxing, and threats newsroom security teams cannot handle. The Globe and Mail, the Star, and Postmedia have seen feminist columnists step back from social media after sustained pile-ons. Management's response is usually a memo about "workplace safety" that does not translate into meaningful protection.
Australia has moved further on this front. The eSafety Commissioner can issue removal requests for doxxing content under the Online Safety Act. The ABC and Guardian Australia have invested in digital safety officers who support writers through harassment campaigns. Canada lacks an equivalent regulator, and most newsroom legal teams advise writers to "log off," which is professional suicide for a columnist whose career depends on public engagement.
Australian parallels and lessons worth borrowing
Australian readers should pay close attention: the threats facing Canadian feminist writers are already arriving in Brisbane and Adelaide newsrooms. News Corp Australia and Nine Entertainment have absorbed most major mastheads, mirroring Postmedia's cost-cutting playbook. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has flagged declining local content production as a result.
The ABC commissions long-form feminist analysis in formats Canadian outlets no longer support, paying writers enough to sustain a practice despite ongoing funding pressure. The CBC, by contrast, has shifted toward digital video and celebrity-led podcasts, leaving fewer resources for argumentative feminist writing that once defined its opinion pages. Feminist writers across formats, including cultural commentary on games, often find steadier audiences in independent outlets than in legacy newsrooms.
The race and class layer beneath it all
Conversations about hiring feminist columnists frequently skip the harder question of who gets to be one. Working-class writers, disabled writers, and racialised writers are routinely passed over for columnists who already hold institutional credibility. The Canadian Journalism Foundation has tracked how few Black, South Asian, and East Asian women appear on the country's most-circulated op-ed pages, even as those pages cover immigration and refugee policy. The result is commentary about marginalised communities written almost entirely by white men.
Australia's Walkley Foundation diversity reports show slow progress on gender but slower on cultural background. Indigenous-led outlets like NITV, the Koori Mail, and IndigenousX have built their own infrastructure, but mainstream mastheads in both countries lag. Feminist columnists from racialised backgrounds face extra pressure to represent their communities, pushing many out of journalism entirely.
Comparing the two media landscapes
| Factor | Canada | Australia |
|---|---|---|
| Largest private owners | Postmedia, Torstar, Quebecor | News Corp Australia, Nine, Seven West Media |
| Public broadcaster support | CBC under sustained pressure; modest funding increases | ABC funded through parliament; Plus and Listen digital expansions |
| Feminist columnist presence on op-ed pages | Declining since 2017; one or two per major masthead | Variable; Guardian Australia strong, News Corp mastheads weaker |
| Online harassment regulation | No dedicated regulator; newsroom legal teams vary | eSafety Commissioner with removal powers under Online Safety Act |
| Freelance union strength | Canadian Media Guild covers staff; freelancers largely uncovered | MEAA runs Freelance Jungle with rate guidance |
| Indigenous media infrastructure | APTN, CBC Indigenous, independent magazines | NITV, IndigenousX, Koori Mail, ABC Indigenous |
Why reader support matters now
Feminist columnists will keep disappearing from Canadian mastheads as long as readers treat legacy subscriptions as a finished product. Subscribing to independent outlets, tipping writers directly, and writing to editors to demand diverse opinion sections are small acts that add up. In Brisbane, Melbourne, and regional Victoria and Tasmania, readers have shown they will pay for the kind of writing legacy publishers refuse to fund. Canadian feminist writers need the same audience pressure. Send a paid pitch to a writer you admire this week, share an independent column with your local MP, or subscribe to SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS and its archives to keep the analysis alive outside the masthead system.