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In the Pundit World, How Much Does Gender Matter?

By Marianne Means

WASHINGTON_ As a columnist, I have always believed that what I write is more important than my gender. I do not write as a woman; I write as a longtime practitioner in the opinion business.

And I do not feel there is overt discrimination on the basis of sex in the newsroom these days, although there certainly was when I began in the 1960s. Since then, women have come a long way in journalism, as in most other professional fields.

But a thoughtful conversation with other columnists and writers organized by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the National Press Club Thursday suggests that there is more going on in the media gender wars than I realized.

The session was prompted by a very public spat earlier this year between Susan Estrich, a Fox commentator, and Michael Kinsley, then editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times. Estrich bawled out Kinsley for not running articles she submitted to the op-ed page and accused him of bias against female columnists.

So the Shorenstein Center set out to examine why there are indeed fewer opinion articles by women than by men in many big city newspapers. Is it the fault of our gender's supposedly timid character or are we being ignored because males who make editorial decisions don't take women's voices seriously?

During the free-wheeling discussion, it became obvious that most male and female participants felt it was a little bit of both.

The problem of proportionately few women's voices is not confined to the op-ed pages; it infects television programs and upper media management ranks as well. During a recent period studied by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, NBC's "Meet the Press" panel featured women 39 percent of the time. ABC's "This Week" on Sundays included female pundits 22 percent of the time.

The lack of female pundits seems inescapably related to the fact that women make up only 34 percent of newspaper editorial supervisors and 25 percent of the television news directors across the country. Women are still too often treated by men as fringe figures and establishment outsiders.

But before this column deteriorates into one long whine, I must point out that female temperament also has a lot to do with this. Deborah Tannen, the scholarly author of several books on human communication, such as the best-selling You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, observed that the difference in the way men and women are socialized can be intimidating.
"Girls are put down if they behave too aggressively,'' she said. "But boys are encouraged to be aggressive.''

Tannen also cited a traditional female unwillingness to fight in public. "Men enjoy ritual fight,'' she said. "Women fight when they get mad, not for fun.

An inherent female reluctance to be confrontational was cited by other participants as well. That, however, may be generational. One participant noted that older women at the magazine where he works tended to let men take the lead in discussions about what to print. But in the classes he teaches at Princeton, his female students are eager to speak up and elbow the boys aside.

Another participant, head of a news syndicate, contended that his criteria for selecting columnists was simply good writing and good reporting. He likes people who bring something to the public debate that nobody else can. If he or she has a big name--such as Hillary Clinton--that's even better.

Others repeated that women were too modest about their talents when they applied for jobs. Susan Page of USA Today noted that of 12 U.S. senators interested in seeking the 2008 presidential nomination, only one was a woman (Hillary again).

When I suggested this reflected the difficulty women face in convincing voters they are tough enough to be commander-in-chief, however, Page said that none of the female senators she interviewed mentioned that. Instead, they simply replied they didn't think they were prepared to handle the job.

Participants were divided over the prospects of great generational change in our business in the coming decades. Some predicted more females in management positions of power, others felt our natures would hold us back.

My own perspective is that the role of women in journalism has been transformed in the past five decades and will continue to evolve.

In the 1950s, the great financial columnist Sylvia Porter was ordered to write under her initials rather than use her first name because the syndicate feared she would not be taken seriously. Such subterfuge is no longer necessary. There may not be enough of us on the editorial pages, but we don't have to hide who we are. In any case, this serious conversation isn't over.

Marianne Means can be reached at means@hearstdc.com.