THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Jane O’Reilly
“Click” is my contribution to all these years of activism.
Author and journalist who focused on political, social and personal issues affecting women, such as equal pay, equal rights, equal parenting, the redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of power. Co-founder of Ms. Magazine, O’Reilly wrote the cover story for the magazine’s first issue, January 1972. In the article, titled “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” O’Reilly coined the term “Click”!


Photo 1. Ms. Magazine planning meeting, 1971 – from left, Mary Peacock, Jane O’Reilly, Joan Edgar, Letty Cotton Pogrebin and Gloria Steinem (photo by Jill Krementz). Photo 2. The first preview of Ms. Magazine published in December 1971 by New York magazine, illustrated by Miriam Wosk.

More About Jane:
- Jane’s website
- Select writings
- The Harvard Crimson 2008
- Running out of time, Reaching the age of acceptance and pendulous earlobes, 2003
- Edith Bunker’s Legacy, Finally, She Would Not Be Stifled, 1981, Panorama – the Television Magazine
- The Housewife’s Moment of Truth, by Jane O’Reilly, from the December 20, 1971 issue of New York Magazine
- “Favorite Stories: Making Meaning from Life,” authors talked about the difference between fiction and memoir in writing, C-SPAN
- Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Papers of Jane O’Reilly, 1965-1993
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, page 346