It’s appropriate that the red, the color of passion and anger, represents the female male slice of the pie in latest set of charts created by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.* The infographics reveal an ugly, unchanging truth: in 2011, the number of articles published by women in top thought-leader magazines was significantly less than the number of articles published by men.
For those unfamiliar with “The Count,” as VIDA calls it, the numbers are shocking. At The Atlantic, women wrote 64 articles in 2011, while men wrote 184. The overall percentage of female bylines dropped 1.5 percent from last year, when the numbers were 52 to 158.
At The New Yorker, whose byline disparity was covered by CJR in 2005, men wrote 449 articles in 2010, while women wrote 163—or 26.63 percent of the total. In 2011, that percentage slid to 26.44 percent. At Harper’s, the number fell to 16.66 percent from 21 percent. Female bylines in the New York Review of Books comprised a mere 12.5 percent of the total in 2011, down from 14.6 percent in 2010. Women’s bylines in the London Review of Books dropped to 13.88 percent from 17.74 percent in 2010. The Boston Review also slipped from 34.96 percent to 31.41 percent. Even progressive magazines like The Nation aren’t gender-equal; in 2011, just 28.71 percent of Nation articles were written by women.*
Though a few outlets, like the New York Times Book Review and The New Republic, increased their female bylines, to 34.42 percent and 20.16 percent respectively, overall, in the past year, we’ve crawled backwards.
This is the second year that VIDA, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting female writers, has researched and compiled information on bylines by gender. Last year, after its’ debut, “The Count” triggered a hailstorm of commentary, both on and off the web. Some blamed institutional sexism; others suggested that women simply needed to stop whining and start submitting more articles.
“The truth is, these numbers don’t lie,” VIDA member Amy King wrote in the original blog post last February. “It’s time to begin asking why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity.” Hundreds of comments piled up beneath her post; mostly pingbacks from outlets ranging from Forbes to Ms. Magazine.
Elissa Straus, of The Sisterhood blog, took editors to task for the gruesome disparity. Strauss wrote to editors at The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and The Atlantic. All responded, except for The Atlantic. “It’s certainly been a concern for a long time among the editors here,” David Remnick told her. “But we’ve got to do better — it’s as simple and as stark as that.” Harper’s editor Ellen Rosenbush told Strauss that she tried to have at least one female writer in every issue. Editor Robert Silvers rattled off a list of women who had written for the New York Review of Books without mentioning his publication’s glaring gender discrepancy. The only editor to offer a thoughtful, in-depth response was Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, who ultimately chalked the inequity up to socialization.
Last week, VIDA released a statement in tandem with their findings for 2011. “…The publication numbers don’t look markedly different than last year’s,” they noted, couching their grim findings in apologetic-sounding optimism. VIDA said they believe “things are in the process of changing for the better.”
Are they really?
Since 2009, the Byline Blog, a part of the Op-Ed Project, has kept a “running tally” of the ratio of women in outlets including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and more. Their findings are similarly dismal.
Over at The American Prospect online, columnist E.J. Graff decried the fact that “time isn’t making significant changes,” and challenged women to stop talking and start doing. Ann Friedman, editor of Good magazine, began a popular Tumblr called Lady Journos. A few days ago, Friedman followed up on her 2006 article “The Byline Gender Gap” with a blog called “Promote Women: Use Your Network to Solve the Gender Gap.” It concluded with actionable bullet points.
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I haven't actually dug into the data gathering methodologies of VIDA's study nor its criteria for determining the sex (or should I say gender?) of individual authors at the publications they chose to study, but I think any commentary (including my own) which fails to do these things is manifestly remiss in its fact checking. Mark Twain's famous quote on statistics notwithstanding, there are billions of dollars in public and private funding in finding, exploring and addressing gender inequities that are perceived or presented as prejudicial or discriminatory towards women. Financial biases aside there is also a very substantial history of advocacy-inspired academics doing studies that, from inception to conclusions, are rife with confirmation biases, undisclosed assumptions and personal zeal to prove what the researchers themselves fundamentally and passionately already believe to be the true Further, after several decades of proselytizing the idea that sex is a purely social construction, I think it not reasonable to expect that gender professionals like VIDA operationally define what they mean by male vs female authors. For example, in this context, by "male," do we mean traditional patriarch or are we also including male pre-op biologically male transgenders who self-identify as women? Would it be better if the male authors were much more disproportionately homosexual or would that just also "prove" discrimination against gay women? In any event, even if we accept this study at face value the most relevant and interesting questions in relation to it have been pre-emptively excluded by the way the topic is presented. To be precise, the unexplained presumption here is that women are being excluded, marginalized and disenfranchised on the basis of sex. While we can debate who the oppressor(s) is/are there is no genuine reflection to determine if there's a reasonable and equitable explanation, which does not involve bigotry. Could this be caused by the personal preferences and work schedules of female authors compared to those of male authors? Are there simply more male journalists actively working and do they do more to promote themselves? The implicit, and automatic, presumption that there is a sexist boogie-man(pun intended) to be found here defies common sense and is never applied when the disparities exist which hurt men and/or benefit women.
For my part, I see the mainstream media as overwhelmingly feminized. Both male and female authors know that if they offend women's groups, regardless of the objective truth of their work, they can be ostracized. Conversely, they may offend men, who have no analogous groups, advocates or class-consciousness, and publish wildly inaccurate statements so long as they promote the politically correct noble truths of the political establishment and the pseudoscience of academia's secular priesthood of social scientists to endlessly portray women as a disadvantaged minority group fighting for equality and justice rather than privilege, power or a paycheck.
It has always required more courage to rock the boat than to challenge the status quo. My suggestion for women wanting to differentiate themselves is to truly rock the boat and challenge the divisive status quo that alienates the sexes from one another and invites big brother to mediate their every disagreement. Women journalists today are particularly well-positioned to call attention to the indifference towards male victims and sympathy towards female abusers and women can get away with talking about these topics without being summarily dismissed and ridiculed for whining and being bitter about not being able to get laid.
#1 Posted by pedro, CJR on Tue 6 Mar 2012 at 07:38 PM
I think about these stats, which someone produces every few years, when I read liberal boiler-plate in the journals listed that feverishly supports affirmative action, etc. The statistics, and hypocrisy, are even worse when it comes to that other identity-politics fixation of the far Left, race.
We have no difficulty guessing that a religiously conservative preacher pushing the issues of sins of the flesh over and over has, ah, 'issues', and I've often wondered to what degree the pushing of (for example) race-based affirmative action by (usually well-set-up)white people, or advocacy of reproductive rights, for women only, by males has do with the personal guilt over their own private thoughts. There certainly does seem to be a lot of 'projection' in accusations of racism, sexism, etc., in western journalism.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 7 Mar 2012 at 12:34 PM
This is national crisis. We need a federal program!
#3 Posted by newspaperman, CJR on Wed 7 Mar 2012 at 01:16 PM
I think cjr.org should not permit comments; think of all the wailing and tooth gnashing from the trolls who pitch up here and let loose their often inventive cack (Ssee pedro and mark richard, above) when they discover they will have to haunt another site. I for one will not miss them. If I feel the need to comment I can always send an email to the editors.
#4 Posted by lauran, CJR on Wed 7 Mar 2012 at 04:32 PM
@lauran:
Maybe if CJR published stories about journalism, and dispensed with peddling leftism disguised as "news" about the industry, it wouldn't get so many negative comments.
By becoming an ideological publication, CJR has opened itself to criticism. It routinely publishes stories by "journalists" who have a history with hard left publications such as The Nation. Will CJR ever publish a story by a writer from a conservative publication? We'll see.
The problem isn't the comments, it's the material CJR publishes that invites them.
#5 Posted by newspaperman, CJR on Thu 8 Mar 2012 at 11:29 AM
Oh, my goodness, what shall we do! This is a major crisis! We will surely be undone as a nation! Sheesh.... CJR should be embarrassed to publish this tripe. Was there a masculine pronoun used in the piece? Perish the thought.
#6 Posted by Mark, CJR on Thu 8 Mar 2012 at 01:57 PM
These women should stop whining and be happy with their representation! I agree with all the comments here, male reporters are better in every way. In general, men are much better than women at everything.
#7 Posted by Shane, CJR on Sun 11 Mar 2012 at 07:29 PM
This latest "I am Woman, Hear Me Roar" stupidity is just the latest liberal dodge - a transparently silly way to give cover to Obama for his flub of the Gubmint's contraception mandate.
These screwy leftie women are being manipulated by the Democratic political machine. First they trot one their activists to Congress in order to persude the Gubmint to force Catholics to dole out birth control pills so they can have unprotected recreational sex on somebody else's nickel (religious beliefs be damned)..
What the frick is next? Maxipads?... Vibrators? Chocolates?.. Perfume?... Whips and chains?.... Who knows?.
They want somebody else's stuff, and they want the Gubmint to get it for them, and that's all I need to hear.
You female journalists want more ink than men? Write more and better stuff than men. Or start your own outlet. But sure as hell don't use this silly whinefest of an article as guide.
Whatever. Stop this juvenile, whining entitlement nonsense, start writing, and things will work out for you.
What I'd like to see is the number of stories written by Democrats as opposed to Republicans... Now THERE is some REAL discrimination for you, sisters!
As for the typical leftie proposal to ban comment here... What else here is worth reading, other than the comments?
Notice how it is ALWAYS the leftists who seek to ban/limit/censor public comments?
#8 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 11 Mar 2012 at 07:52 PM
Interesting article that could be used to segway into an analysis of women and employment in general.
It's actually kind of interesting when you look at unemployment trends because you see that women have suffered less of a drop in the workforce than men:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/01/135036740/6-ways-of-looking-at-unemployment
Part of that reason might be the less salary cost per person for women:
http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/us-earningsunemployment-figures-by-race-gender/
and part of that reason might be less demand in male dominated, physical labor intensive fields like construction.
What to me is interesting is that you see more even levels of gender participation in work and education as work value becomes more mental production and less physical production. Women's salaries rise, women's entry into various fields increases, even gender stereotypes of women less able to do male physical work (like on the battlefield) are breaking down. Women are in the workforce. More in a second because of the 2 link limit:
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 12 Mar 2012 at 02:47 AM
So women are in the workforce, though they are still paid less than men, but there is something unusual about how they are employed:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/16-percenters-female-leadership-is.html
They are not mission critical. They are not leaders. The positions of power remain in the hands of men with a 16 to 25 percent sprinkle of women.
Why is that?
It could be because women are considered risky prospects in positions of power, responsibility, and mission criticality because of the perception that their bodies could potentially side track them for 9 months or more down the road. In our age of birth control this maybe should not be such an impediment.
There also may be a residual perception that women are property, not masters:
http://coreyrobin.com/2011/07/19/why-the-left-gets-neoliberalism-wrong-its-the-feudalism-stupid/
therefore there is an irrational, almost instinctual, hestitation to put women in powerful positions.
In both cases, people are using the criteria of the body to disqualify the qualities of an individual mind, which is unfortunate since the nation could use more contributions from women like Brooksley Born, Gretchen Morgenson, and Elizabeth Warren.
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 12 Mar 2012 at 03:26 AM
"Notice how it is ALWAYS the leftists who seek to ban/limit/censor public comments?"
The last guy who wanted comments censored was on of your guys, Dr Dick Courtney.
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/heartland_gleick_and_media_law.php#comments
And yeah, the right wingers are notorious about deleting comments, censoring science, and banning users they don't like.
So yeah it's not a left or right thing, it's sometimes a tolerance for things you disagree with thing and sometimes a tolererance for abusive idiots thing.
Some people have low tolerance. That has nothing to do with whether they follow Buffet or Che.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 12 Mar 2012 at 03:43 AM
Screw these stupid women journalists!
#12 Posted by Bobbi Jo Herman, CJR on Fri 16 Mar 2012 at 01:05 PM