Girl talk

During my brief stint as editor of the Chicago Maroon's "Viewpoints" section, I was one of two female columnists. The other one wrote a dating column. This meant that my column, which was, like this blog, only sometimes about politics, was the closest thing to a political column written by a woman. Reading submissions, it often seemed as if every last male student had written a polemic on the war in Iraq that he wished to share with the rest of the University. Female students I knew who had strong political opinions just didn't seem to have that same drive to make those opinions known.

The front page of the New Republic online currently has 5 articles and the week's movie picks. Only one is written by a woman (unless my google research indicating "Chris Strohm" is male was incorrect). That article is a careful, nuanced analysis of...Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.

I do not think that women should be forced to write on political subjects (nor do I think that men should be forced to write on, say, Ashton Kutcher). I'm not really advocating anything here, nor am I prepared to provide any sort of scientific analysis of this. I just wonder why politically-minded women seem less inclined to share their views than do politically-minded men.