divine angst

comments

Here’s a good one for ya’…

In today’s Post, Zophia Smardz pens:

“What do you think — are women as opinionated as men? I know that’s a hoot-you-out-of-the-room question most places these days. But here in news opinionland, it’s been topic number one thanks to a recent kerfuffle between certain outspoken women and the editors of various national newspaper opinion pages.

It started, as such things often do, as a fairly routine wrangle over access. Why, the critics demanded, are almost all the columnists and contributors on the op-ed pages of papers like The Post and The New York Times men? Why aren’t more women being let in the door? That’s not fair, is it?

Well, no, that wouldn’t be. But then things took a more intriguing turn. One editor — a woman, it so happens — offered the opinion that members of her sex are just less comfortable expressing pure opinion. Of course the critics weren’t buying, retorting that the problem is simply discrimination by male editors who still dominate editorial page staffs. But — not so, countered the editors’ champions. Because if that’s all it is, then how do you explain the bloggers? Yup — turns out there are way fewer females than males firing off-the-hip convictions into no-entry-barred cyberspace, too.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2538-2005Mar26.html