Hughes, Helen MacGill, 1903-1992

Helen MacGill Hughes was born in 1903 in Vancouver, BC, to lawyer and journalist James Henry MacGill (1870-1939) and Helen Gregory MacGill (1864-1947), the first female judge in British Columbia. Hughes received her BA in Economics and German from the University of British Columbia in 1925, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1936. She married Everett Cherrington Hughes in 1927, and they had two daughters, Helen Cherrington Brock and Elizabeth Gregory Schneewind.

Helen Hughes wrote freelance while following Everett Hughes’s career to Quebec, Chicago, and Boston. She served as the editorial assistant and later managing editor of the American Journal of Sociology, and published articles in The Canadian Journal of Economics, The Journal of Social Issues, Time, and elsewhere. She taught classes at various institutions, including at Northeastern University. Her primary scholarly and personal interests were in women’s rights, women in academia, and media studies.

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