A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Dated 1938, this gem is a time capsule of the attitude toward women creators back in the day. Note that it is signed by a woman.

I got into comics as a professional in the 1980′s and by then, things had not really changed much. There were a few women who had status, some grizzled vets who performed as dragon ladies at the gate, and a handful of hopefuls who knew that they weren’t competing with men for every gig or attention, since most jobs didn’t go to women. So there was some female competition going on that wasn’t very pleasant.

Interesting running into young girls today who go on and on about how there’s just no discrimination in comics because they never experienced it.

You don’t experience it, because what was once a hard road was paved for you.

This letter has been circulating for some time, and I double checked with snopes.com to make sure it was real. It is, though a number of online pundists questioned it, what with it being so amazingly sexist and all. During WWII, the male work force dwindled, and animator positions for women began to open up at Disney.

While a few women had jobs as animators prior to WWII, as the letter correctly states, most of the gigs went to men.