Wade, Betsy, 1929-

Throughout her career, Betsy Wade (1929- ) has been an active trade unionist, serving as a shop steward, picket captain, and eventually as an officer in The Newspaper Guild, first as a Vice President of its International (1975-1981), and then, after winning bitterly contested elections on a dissident slate, two terms as President of the New York City-based Local 3 of the Guild (1978-1982). She was also a founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), in 1974. Wade, an editor and writer, worked for the New York Times from 1956 to until her retirement in 2001. At the Times, she worked as copy editor on each of its three desks: local, national and foreign. She was chief of the foreign desk during the Vietnam War, as well as an assistant editor of the controversial Pentagon Papers during the same period. Wade was the first female head of the foreign copy desk at the Times. She was also among seven named plaintiffs in an influential successful sex discrimination case against the Times, which was settled out of court with an agreement to compensate the plaintiffs with back pay. Wade is occasionally referred to by her married name, Elizabeth Boylan (she married James Boylan, founder of Columbia Journalism Review).