12 articles today in the NYT's "Week in Review" section. Only 1 by a woman. MoDo.

[Captain Hilts]

I am fascinated on what a low profile women have on the opinion pages of the NYT and Washington Post.

MoDo is less than 10% of the writing in today's WiR section. Representing 51% of the population.

On the Washington Post op page, Ruth Marcus and Anne Applebaum split responsibility, each representing 26% of the population. Eugene Robinson and Colbert King split the 13% of black Americans representing 6.5% each.

[ismnotwasm]

1. According to the PBS show

Posted By BlueIris, "Women, Power and Politics"--Which is awesome if you haven't seen it--The US ranks 69th among countries with women in government. I've been stewing on that for a couple of days.

I wonder what the Country wide stats on editorials and OP's are? Nothing good I'm sure.

Then there's always the Rightwing nutcases like Coulter and Malkin who get a lot of press by being horrible and weird. I suppose they try and follow in the tradition of Limbaugh and Savage, but percentage wise it just sucks.

I haven't heard much about Coulter lately. Not that I actually try to find what she's spewing.

[Sisaruus]

2. "women are virtually invisible" - Global Media Monitoring Project

The Global Media Monitoring Project has concluded, “The world we see in the news is a world in which women are virtually invisible.” Similarly, the Pew Research Center found that only 30% of U.S. news coverage included even one female source. (Cable news and PBS NewsHour fared worse with only 19% of the news stories citing a woman.) This year, fewer than 14% of the op-eds published by the Washington Post were by women, and an equal percent by minorities. Researchers at Rutgers University found that almost all of the academic opinions came from men: 97% in The Wall Street Journal and 82% in The New York Times.

As if that’s not enough to make you care, consider this: The White House Project found that only 14% of the guests on Sunday morning public affair talk shows are female and are less likely to be the lead guest or be invited back for repeat appearances. The National Urban League found that in an eighteen-month period only three black women appeared on these shows. Female members of Congress get less press mention than their male counterparts. The U.S intellectual and political magazines are also dominated by male writers. The male-to-female ratio of the Atlantic was 6 to 1; Foreign Affairs 6 to 1; the New Yorker, 3.5 to 1; New York Times Magazine, 2.5 to 1; and the New Republic, 8 to 1.

The absence of women is not limited to mainstream media; the guest lists of The Daily Show or the Colbert Report are 75% male. Alternate websites such as Counterpunch, ZNet and Common Dreams heavily favor male writers. And less than 4% of the workshops at the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform, 7% at the Allied Media Conference and less than 2% at Unity 2008 were focused on women and the media.

If you can get to Boston this spring (the last weekend in March), plan on attending the national conference Women, Action and the Media (www.womenactionmedia.org). They've got a call for workshop proposals out right now.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Wow! 14% of Wash Post op-eds are by women....AMAZING.

But not surprising.

Thanks for the link!