2008 Woodie Awards
Women need to step it up
Lainie Frost
Issue date: 4/6/06 Section: Opinion
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You would never know Emerson College was populated mostly by women if you judged by the number of opinion pieces written by women in The Beacon.
I thought perhaps this trend would change, since March was national Women's History Month. Sadly, it did not.
There was the occasional female-penned piece, but overall, women's opinions remained sparser than sprinkles on a stale cupcake.
Women's History Month led me to anticipate a resurrection of female opinions from the cavernous hiding holes in which they have been hibernating.
I imagined an entire month of considering alternative points of view brought up by educated women writers. Since March began, however, there have not been enough women stepping up to the challenge of transcribing what seems to be more than just an Emerson problem.
If March signifies the celebration of women and what they have to say, then where are they?
According to columnist Anne Applebaum of The Washington Post, "only 10.4 percent of articles on [The Post's] op-ed page in the first two months of [2005] were written by women, 16.9 percent of the New York Times's op-ed articles were by women and 19.5 percent of the Los Angeles Times's op-eds were by women."
Applebaum goes on to state that this fact made her feel lonely. I, on the other hand, am just disappointed.
The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz acknowledged this issue in a Dec. 2005 article in which she, like Applebaum, expressed her confusion with the limited female sources for op-ed pieces.
In Schultz's article, she writes, "As my own editor warned me when I first started writing a column, at least a fourth of the ugly mail will be from men who think I have no business getting paid to give my opinion. Darned if he wasn't right, too."
For Schultz, the "ugly mail" caused her to grow a thick skin, but for many women, the idea of being negatively judged is a nightmare.
The only solution is to learn to take some risks. Who knows who you'll inspire or what contributions to women's continuing historic narrative you can make?
I thought perhaps this trend would change, since March was national Women's History Month. Sadly, it did not.
There was the occasional female-penned piece, but overall, women's opinions remained sparser than sprinkles on a stale cupcake.
Women's History Month led me to anticipate a resurrection of female opinions from the cavernous hiding holes in which they have been hibernating.
I imagined an entire month of considering alternative points of view brought up by educated women writers. Since March began, however, there have not been enough women stepping up to the challenge of transcribing what seems to be more than just an Emerson problem.
If March signifies the celebration of women and what they have to say, then where are they?
According to columnist Anne Applebaum of The Washington Post, "only 10.4 percent of articles on [The Post's] op-ed page in the first two months of [2005] were written by women, 16.9 percent of the New York Times's op-ed articles were by women and 19.5 percent of the Los Angeles Times's op-eds were by women."
Applebaum goes on to state that this fact made her feel lonely. I, on the other hand, am just disappointed.
The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz acknowledged this issue in a Dec. 2005 article in which she, like Applebaum, expressed her confusion with the limited female sources for op-ed pieces.
In Schultz's article, she writes, "As my own editor warned me when I first started writing a column, at least a fourth of the ugly mail will be from men who think I have no business getting paid to give my opinion. Darned if he wasn't right, too."
For Schultz, the "ugly mail" caused her to grow a thick skin, but for many women, the idea of being negatively judged is a nightmare.
The only solution is to learn to take some risks. Who knows who you'll inspire or what contributions to women's continuing historic narrative you can make?
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