Maureen Dowd

Dowd was born the youngest of five children in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Margaret "Peggy" (Meenehan), was a housewife, and her father, Mike Dowd, worked as a Washington, D.C. police inspector. Dowd graduated from (now defunct) Immaculata High School in 1969. She received a B.A. in English in 1973 from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Dowd began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature writer. When the newspaper closed in 1981, she went to work at Time. In 1983, she joined The New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter. She began serving as correspondent in the Times Washington bureau in 1986.

In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award from Columbia University. In 1992, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting, and in 1994 she won a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.

Dowd became a columnist on The New York Times op-ed page in 1995, replacing Anna Quindlen, who left to become a full-time novelist. Dowd was named a Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine in 1996, and won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, for distinguished commentary. She won The Damon Runyon Award for outstanding contributions to journalism in 2000, and became the first Mary Alice Davis Lectureship speaker (sponsored by the School of Journalism and the Center for American History) at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. In 2010, Dowd was ranked #43 on The Daily Telegraph's list of the 100 most influential liberals in America; in 2007, she was ranked #37 on the same list.

Dowd has been accused of sexism by numerous figures, including Clark Hoyt, then-public editor of The New York Times. A 2017 study which examined sexualized shaming of Monica Lewinsky in mainstream news coverage noted that in Dowd's extensive coverage of Monica Lewinsky, she repeatedly "mocked and disparaged her." A 2009 study of sexism towards Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the 2008 election noted that Dowd had disparaged Palin as a "Barbie" over her pageantry past.

In 2012, NUI Galway awarded her an honorary doctorate.

In January 2014, Dowd said she ate about one-quarter of a cannabis-infused chocolate bar, while touring the legalized recreational cannabis industry. She said she was later told she should have only eaten one-sixteenth, which was not in the instructions on the label. She then described her negative experiences with legal cannabis in a June 3, 2014, The New York Times op-ed. In September 2014, Dowd followed up on this story with another New York Times op-ed, this time describing a discussion of using consumable cannabis with her "marijuana Miyagi" Willie Nelson.

On March 4, 2014, Dowd published a column about the dominance of men in the film industry; in it, she quoted Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. According to BuzzFeed, "leaked emails from Sony" suggested that Dowd had promised to provide the draft column to Pascal's husband, former Times reporter Bernard Weinraub, prior to the column's publication. BuzzFeed said the column "painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication." Both Dowd and Weinraub have denied that Weinraub ever received the column. On December 12, 2014, Times public editor Margaret Sullivan concluded, "While the tone of the email exchanges is undeniably gushy, I don't think Ms. Dowd did anything unethical here." In August 2014, it was announced that Dowd would become a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. Her first article under the new arrangement was published more than a year later.

During the 2016 presidential election, Dowd penned a controversial New York Times op-ed, titled "Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk." Dowd argued that Trump held dovish foreign policy beliefs, citing his purported opposition to the invasion of Iraq. However, prior to the publication of the op-ed, it had been reported that Trump did in fact support the invasion, and there were no statements on the record opposing it. Throughout Trump's presidency, critics of his foreign policy referenced the Dowd op-ed, claiming that many of the actions taken by Trump were entirely inconsistent with the narrative put forth by Dowd. In 2018, Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, wrote that Trump's foreign policy was clearly hawkish and stated, "Yes, I'm extremely angry. I have no right to ask that anyone who told you in 2016 that Trump was going to be the more dovish president should probably not talk about foreign policy for a good long while. But dear God, it would be nice."