Maureen Dowd has noticed that there aren't so many female op-ed columnists out there. While it's true she's not the first to notice this, she does make some worthwhile points. Especially, "There's been a dearth of women writing serious opinion pieces for top news organizations, even as there's been growth in female sex columnists for college newspapers." As Viewpoints editor like a thousand years ago (OK, two years ago), I was also the only female columnist. The only other female columnist to come on board during that time wrote about dating. I tried to get others to write, but many had either a fear of being that outspoken in public or just a lack of that passion to have everyone hear what they think about politics. I've blogged about all this before, and have also already mentioned that things at the Maroon have somewhat improved since then. But what really got to me wasn't that the dating column was not so hot (it actually had quite a following) but that I had to basically represent women with political views--all women with all sorts of political views--in each column. In a monopolistic sort of way this was cool, but still...
So what, then, is the point of this post? I believe the point is that, as a rare girl-pundit, I hope to benefit from the craze for girl-pundits and get installed somewhere as soon as possible. I hope to benefit from the exponential levels of affirmative action for female opinion-writers that are, perhaps, currently floating around.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Girl-pundit to the rescue
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2 comments:
"I had to basically represent women with political views--all women with all sorts of political views--in each column."
Much like you have the impossibly heavy burden of having to represent the diverse views of all Francophilic Zionists in each blog post...
"I hope to benefit from the craze for girl-pundits and get installed somewhere as soon as possible."
Rather than trying to achieve this goal by following the bootless Susan Estrich mau-mau strategy, I'd suggest raising your profile by fostering a more vibrant comments community - which would necessitate getting the hell off Blogger.
She also makes some really not worthwhile points, like the observation that, while Lawrence Summers is wrong, wrong, wrong about that whole biological gender differences thing, women want to be liked and tend not to have opinions/want to advertise them, and men feel castrated by criticism from women. (I'll definitely be taking that into consideration next time I contradict a male professor at office hours.) She can't have it both ways. Either she should accept that what some evil conservative baby-eater said might have some validity, or she should lay off the armchair diagnosis of innate gender differences.
I wouldn't worry so much over a dearth of opinionated females at the Maroon. Several come to mind--Emily, Laura, occasional fiery contributers, etc. In fact, most of them take significantly more controversial stances than you tend to do (though they are also more politically polarized, I suppose). I think female punditry will survive, probably better without Maureen Dowd than with her. In fact, I think the NYTimes op-ed page could use a new voice to represent all women with all sorts of political views, perhaps a francophilic Zionist voice. You should look into that.
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