Why are there not more female pundits?

I've never thought of this before, at least in a conscious way.

My new favorite blogger, Brooklyn-based and Midwestern-transplant-by-way-of-DC Elizabeth Nolan Brown, tackles the question.

1) Being a political journalist/columnist, or a serious national affairs/sociocultural-type reporter/freelancer, has got to be hard (both in terms of skill level and opportunities to break in). Very hard, regardless of gender. It’s not something any writer/reporter can just do. But women, I think, have a lot more options when it comes to the range of topics, in general, they can write about and still be “journalists.” There are many, many more (paying) outlets for fashion/beauty/entertainment/sex/relationship writing than political writing. In my own fantasies of the joys/horrors of ever trying to strike it as a freelance writer, I’ve browsed through all the how-to-query sheets on media bistro, and sometimes wondered why the heck I wasn’t trying to write the fluff stuff seriously.

So for the kind of person who starts out with mild pretensions of being a serious journalist, or even just a daily news reporter, or a mildly authentic storyteller, and finds it daunting/hard/unrenumerative, etc., there’s a lot easier ‘out,’ I think, for women than for men, who, for the most part, don’t have the option of writing about healthy/beauty/fashion/etc. It’s kind of the same psychology that I think is often under-valued when explaining why women ‘opt out’ of the workplace—work can suck! It’s sometimes hard, and sometimes boring, and for people who don’t find themselves in a perfect situation, staying home with the kids full-time can seem like a socially acceptable way to ‘fail,’ to give up—one that more men would avail themselves of, too, if they could as easily.

2) Another thing is that there are very few separate “men’s issues” in politics, or media, but there are separate “women’s issues”—things like reproductive rights, gender discrimination, the politics of motherhood, media sexism, etc., just to name a few. While these should *theoretically* be things of concern to both genders, they’re not, and I can’t entirely blame men for not taking them as seriously (while I pay attention to, say, race issues, it’s not—for better or worse—something I tend to spend much time exploring in depth or writing about or anything like that; also, why would a male writer want to carve out a niche in writing about sexism, or gender discrimination, or reproductive rights? There’s always going to be a woman writer who can claim more authenticity, and some who even feel offended by a male writing about these things, so there’s totally a disincentive for them to even consider doing so).

Women have had to carve out their own spaces in the blogosphere—places like Broadsheet, Feministe, Feministing, XX Factor, Jezebel, (Ladyblog!)—to discuss these issues, separate from the “real” political issues, like military endeavors, campaigns, taxes, etc. Again, this is understandable; there are a few Big General Political Issues, the sorts that get talked about at the major political blogs and magazines, the hard news stuff, and then all sorts of non-gendered softer stuff – education, race issues, food politics – have to carve out their own separate spaces as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this. It’s just that … well, a lot of very smart, very political women writers/bloggers/pundits are naturally going to be attracted to reading about issues that directly affect them. Which means less time keeping up with the Big General Political Issues. There are only so many hours that can be devoted to keeping up with blog conversations per day, and every minute spent reading Shakesville or the Independent Women’s Forum blog means less time that can be devoted to, say, Andrew Sullivan or Matthew Iglesias. It’s impossible to keep up with it all.

I’m not someone who’s ever had any aspirations to being a Serious Political Blogger (clearly), but as someone who does want to participate in whatever small way in the conversation, who lives in DC, who hangs out with a lot of journalists and writers, and who just generally wants to be well-informed about what’s going on … even I find it daunting. So I think, yeah, this is certainly a disadvantage for women writers/bloggers who do aspire to really be out there—either you’ve got to just do the women’s stuff, or just do the Big Political Issues, and that’s got to be a hard call to have to make. [And, again, the socialization thing, but I think women who show an interest in political/sociology/media etc. are still often encouraged more to focus on social issues than on horserace politics, economics, or foreign affairs).

3) A lot of who-writes-for-where-and-about-what is driven by editors. And if an editor has two people, a man and a woman, who can write about some economic issue, but only the woman can credibly write an article about, say,the 'opt out revolution,' they're going to assign the either/or story to the guy so they can assign the women's-only story to the girl. That's certainly not sexist. But it does work against more women writing about the Serious General Political Issues.

Taken as a whole, I think women actually have many more opportunities than men to make a career out of being writers/jouranlists/bloggers. Just not necessarily writing about the kinds of things they may want to write about, or the kinds of things on which we place a premium as Serious Issues.

A couple of comments:

Yes, men can and do write about non-political matters: the mastheads of Esquire, Details, and Men's Fitness are made up of men. Granted, these positions are few and far between, but it's not totally out of the question. Entertainment journalism has plenty of men, too.

I especially second the point about why women opt out. Besides the fact that it's more socially acceptable for a mother to quit her job to care for children, if women have the means to do so, if work isn't that important to them, then why not? Depending upon the woman, this may not be an agonizing decision to make, but an easy one.

But overall, very astute analysis. The blogosphere has changed things somewhat--and I still believe things will change in the future. But even up-and-comers like Dana Goldstein still mix in social issues and psychology; they just aren't the "true" pundits. Personally, I like my commentators to be as well-rounded as possible, I like them to comment on social issues, mix in a popular song or two, discuss the cultural significance (or not) of The Good Wife. And that's done by men, too.

(Hat tip Conor Friedersdorf)

I Wish I Could Write as Well as Emily Gould

"Vision of Love": If only I could write about my thoughts and experiences that sound quietly revelatory, as they do here; "Why I Write For Free" on analyzing and critiquing a situation and an essay.

When parsing advertorials, I wonder: Do those writers feel their souls are dying, slowly? Or they just hurry it along, just another paycheck, gotta get it done? Do they even care? Some people like writing press releases and advertising copy; it can be fun, if you make it. I often tried making games out of silly assignments just to amuse myself.

We're Still at Risk

No wonder why so many children have difficulty with word problems: "Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices" suggests that real-world math examples undercut the actual mathematics because it's harder to focus when details get in the way. They open with a classic "train problem" of times and schedules that are always ridiculous, the kind of problems that frustrate me and which I inevitably leave blank. Comparing that with the simple equation after it--well, how am I supposed to know what variable fits where? The concept is completely lost in words, but I know how to do the math.

I've always felt that math should stick to numbers, with certain punctuation marks and letters as worthwhile substitutes. Save the stories for English class, it'll just confuse us. I was one of those kids who'd point out logical inconsistencies with the real world even if they had nothing to do with the problem, exactly the type of thing that pisses off both students and teachers alike. Word problems were the scourge of my mathematical existence for most of school. Those train problems always confused the hell out of me, and frankly, I preferred the straight-alone algebraic equations. I also never liked multiple choice questions for math problems, because if I did the problem and was off by a little bit I couldn't possibly pick A or D, thereby getting the entire question wrong, instead of only losing a point or two from some silly error.

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The New York Times today published several articles dealing with education, partly because it's been 25 years since the seminal "A Nation at Risk" was released. The politics behind the controversial report are very interesting, as Ronald Reagan only cared about instituting school prayer back and actually wanted to demolish the Department of Education. But Americans reacted to the core message of the report: That the educational system was mediocre and the US would lose its advantage in the world if something wasn't done. Reagan instead abandoned his political agenda and jumped on the bandwagon, and education has been covered by the media and is consistently listed as one of the vital issues facing Americans.

However, as much as our educational system has changed in the last 25 years, new technologies and new fads in other sectors have undermined learning. For one thing, IM and text-message speak--the lol linguistics that make my blood boil--are beginning to seep into schoolwork. This isn't surprising in the least, but it's something that drives me crazy. I understand not typing properly in IMs, and capitalizing "I" in text messages is usually difficult and fruitless. However, there's a difference between "ill" and "i'll", "were" and "we're", "wont" and "won't". That little apostrophe separates two different words with two different meanings. Trying to decipher the message with "intentional" typos is annoying. For the most part, we've been able to adapt, but it's still a glaring sign of laziness. That extra keystroke is not hard; it's automatic for me.

This worries me. Richard Sterling, executive director of the National Writing Project and a professor at the University of Southern California, Berkeley, wants to throw out capitalization too. "When his teenage son asked what the presence of the capital letter added to what the period at the end of the sentence signified, he had no answer," reports the Times. Excuse me? A guy who's in charge of a group that aims to improve the teaching of writing and who grades papers does not know how to answer this question? It's for readability, the ability to visually denote the beginning of one idea (the sentence) from another. Without punctuation, reading would be a headache, as we would never be able to follow a story or an idea without getting confused. Anyone who's read stream-of-conscious works or On the Road understands this.

Of course, texting and IMing aren't considered real writing. If you're sending a quick message about meeting for lunch, it doesn't have to be formal. Trying to relay dialogue or a story over IM is very different from verbally telling the person, and concessions are made. However, emails, blog postings, essays for God's sake, are. They are time-consuming (at least for me), and for many people, they are graded or judged. Don't dumb yourself down for the sake of expidency.

What's also notable in the article--and which I've seen elsewhere--is the statistic that the percentage of black teenagers who write in personal journals (they don't define this term though) is greater than the percentage of whites. I think it's pretty self-explanatory that girls are more likely to do so than boys, but the perception that blogging is more of a certain type of white-hipster thing (as pronounced by the media, natch) isn't true.