1 out of 8, 2 out of 11, 2 out of 25

By Kathy G.

I'm late on this, but better late than never, I suppose. I wanted to congratulate my blog friends Matthew Yglesias (whom I've actually met a time or two in the flesh) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (whom I only cyber-know) on their new gigs. Matt is leaving The Atlantic to join the Center for American Progress, and Ta-Nehisi will be a blogger at The Atlantic.

When Matt announced he was leaving, it immediately occurred to me that Ta-Nehisi would be a great replacement (I swear!). I meant to write a post to that effect, but obviously I missed my chance.

Anyway, I'm very pleased to see that: a) The Atlantic hired such a talented writer (and Ta-Nehisi is someone whose work I've been admiring since his Village Voice days), b) Ta-Nehisi has broken the color line of the previously all-white lineup of Atlantic bloggers, and c) that he's broken through the Ivy League barrier as well (Ta-Nehisi went to Howard, but every other Atlantic blogger attended Harvard or some other Ivy League institution). Huzzah and kudos all around.

I think Ta-Nehisi was a great choice, don't get me wrong. But I have to wonder -- why is it that, out of a line-up of eight full-time bloggers*, The Atlantic has seen it fit to hire only one woman (Megan McArdle)? One female out of eight, or 12.5%, is pathetic. It's not like there aren't scads of fabulously talented women bloggers out there. For their next hire, why doesn't The Atlantic consider one of the following:

How about, say, the brilliant Echidne of the Snakes? The Atlantic's sole female blogger and supposed expert on economics, Megan McArdle, consistently embarrasses The Atlantic and herself by the many rudimentary errors about economics she makes. (Here is just a partial list of stuff she's gotten wrong since just the beginning of this year: she's screwed up basic economic concepts like revealed preference, public choice,  monopsony, and the Coase theorem, and has also seriously misrepresented what the peer-reviewed economic literature says about policies like the minimum wage, early childhood education, unions and productivity, and credit discrimination).

But instead of, or in addition to, McArdle, they could have a real live Ph.D.-wielding economist who actually knows what the fuck she's talking about! Imagine that! In addition to her economic expertise, Echidne is a damned good writer. Even though she grew up in (I believe) Finland and English isn't her first language, Echidne, even on her worst day, writes with wit, verve, and style. In English. Whereas McArdle would be hard-pressed to write her way out of a paper bag. In English.

But Echidne is far from the only choice out there. How about, say, the best political blogger around, period? Or our country's smartest young writer about politics and culture, full stop? Or any of these other smart, lively, talented, terrific women?    

I have no idea whether all or any of those women would be interested in blogging for The Atlantic, but even if they aren't, I can easily come up with another dozen or two names of women writers and bloggers who are equally talented, and just as good or better than any of the men who are currently blogging for that publication.

The problem is not that there aren't talented female bloggers out there. Au contraire. Part of what is going on is sexism, obviously -- women writers in all fields tend to be valued less, and tend to be taken less seriously. And this seems to be especially true of women who write about politics. Though there is no shortage of talented female political writers out there, shockingly, only 2 out of 25 Washington Post opinion columnists are female (see the list on the lower left-hand side of this page). As are only 2 of 11 at the New York Times (and weirdly, those two Timeswomen are eerily similar to one another, and focus not on policy, but on fluffy, gossipy, personality-driven pieces).

Sexism is obviously a big part of the story of why women writers are so scandalously underrepresented on the op-ed pages of the nation's newspapers and as salaried bloggers on the "serious" websites. I think another big part of the problem is that liberal women, and especially liberal feminist women, are not particularly welcome in opinion journalism.

There's probably as least as much of a left/right gender gap between male and female journalists as there is between male and female voters in general, after all, and I would wager that a disproportionate number of female political writers are liberal and feminist. Yet of the  women opinion writers three publications I mentioned above, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum and The Atlantic's McArdle are not especially feminist; the Post's Ruth Marcus and the New York Times' Gail Collins apparently are feminists, but don't write about it all that much; and the TImes' Maureen Dowd is, of course, vitriolically anti-feminist. And Marcus and Collins are the only ones in that group that are mildly left of center; the others are all varying shades of right-wing.

Media outlets have gotten beaten up so hard by the right for their alleged "liberal" (ha!) bias that for a long time now, they've shied away from hiring strongly liberal columnists (and the ones that fall through the cracks, like Paul Krugman, seem to get there by accident -- remember, Krugman was hired by the Times back in the days when he best-known as a fan of globalization and the neoliberal world order). The big media outlets also bend over backwards to hire conservatives as columnists, even when those conservatives are not especially smart or talented (the weekly William Kristol trainwreck on the Times op-ed page is perhaps the most prominent example of this unfortunate tendency).

As for the feminist part of the equation, I think that feminist writers are viewed as a threat by many of the (still overwhelmingly male) editors who control the op-ed pages and opinion magazines. We saw how the mainstream media completely lost their shit over Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, so it's not a big stretch to imagine that those very same media professionals have equally sexist attitudes toward their female colleagues (or potential colleagues). After all, look at the many not especially smart or interesting female writers who've made a career out of bashing feminism: Camille Paglia, Caitlin Flanagan, Maureen Dowd, etc. Somehow I don't think their biggest fans are female -- do you?

The key to getting more women opinion columnists and more (salaried) women bloggers out there is, I think, twofold. First of all, feminists, male and female alike, need to keep on publicizing this issue, and need to keep the pressure on. Part of the reason women are so underrepresented is not necessarily active, misogynist hostility (although, post-Hillary especially, I will never rule that out). Some of it is just plain laziness -- men considering only people they know through their own personal networks, who tend to be largely male. Or men having an unconscious bias in favor hiring others like them (same sex, same race, similar class or educational background, etc.) With the well-meaning guys out there who are sympathetic towards feminism, probably all they need is a little pressure, a bit of pushback. I'm pretty sure we can through to them. And if we make enough noise we can at least have some influence over the others.

The other key lies in attacking the media's relentless conservative bias and in wholly dismantling the myth of the liberal media. Once the mavens who control the media are disabused of that notion, they'll stop being punk'd by the right so much, and they'll be more open to hiring actual flesh-and-blood liberals. Or at least they might one day be as terrified of pissing off the left as they are of pissing off the right. The left blogosphere has already had some modest success in breaking the right-wing stranglehold on the media -- witness, among other things, the rise of Keith Olbermann, and the increasingly brave and outspoken writings of Joe Klein. It doesn't mean there isn't still a whole lot of stupid right-wing crap being pushed by the so-called liberal media. But things are certainly much better today than they were five years ago.

*UPDATE: Actually, I was wrong about this. A reader informs me that The Atlantic has only four full-time bloggers (which includes just one woman, Megan McArdle). The other four (male) bloggers on staff blog part-time but have other responsibilities at the magazine. The reader also informs me that The Atlantic's five top top business executives are all men, as is the top editor at the magazine, his deputy, and three out of the four deputy managing editors. Which speaks volumes, of course. 

Comments

[Mike]

I stopped paying for the Atlantic when they started featuring, for all intents, a "What's the Matter With Women This Month?" article in every issue. This may have always been a problem, but I started noticing it with Flanagan.

The funny part is that it always seems to be women who get to do the attacking, and not with social science or data or even smart writing, but Cosmo-level dreck like Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him!" (It makes me miss Flanagan.) Even last month they ran an embarrassing and incomprehensible essay by Sandra Tsing Loh, when the real news others caught was with studies saying that women are staying in the workforce.

What's their problem?

[swampcracker]

I believe you short changed Lindsay (Majikthise) with respect to your aforementioned writers. Articulate, gifted, reserved ... a rising star who can really use a break.

[Barry]

With Megan (and Ross Douthat and Marc Ambinder) I think that a 'reverse Krugman' syndrome is striking. Krugman was an independent, in the elite of his field, so he could tell the press to f*ck off. Megan is a failure businesswomen, who's not even a success in journalism, but rather in snarky BS. She can't go anywhere else and earn a middle-class living. Fallows (and her future employers) know that she's much safer than an outsider.

[Ninja Zombie]

"a real live Ph.D.-wielding economist"

Spoken like a person with a Ph.D. in english lit.

Before you get a Ph.D., you think "wow, those guys are doctors. They must be smart." After you get it (a real one, at least, I'm not talking about stuff like "critical theory"), you realize that even the Ph.D.'s are just a bunch of amateurs, and the degree means squat.

Seriously, I have one, it doesn't mean squat. It's a union card for academic jobs, and it impresses realtors. It's not good for much else, and is certainly not a qualification for blogging.

[Richard]

"a real one, at least, I'm not talking about stuff like "critical theory"

you lost me there.

[Melinda]

Going to the question of representation in "mainstream" blogging I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by the nearly absolute cluelessness about class issues, labor issues, and so on in the lefty blogosphere and would *love* to see someone who's been good on those issues get more visibility. Alas, right now the only people I can think of who have been consistently mindful on those questions are David Sirota and some of the folks at Shakesville. I think classism probably a problem for the "progressive" movement in general (and may be another distinguishing characteristic between progressives and fauxgressives), but it's almost certainly a political problem as Democrats try to figure out how to draw in more white, working-class voters, formulate policy responses to increasing inequality in the US, and try to do more than just pay lip service to social justice issues.

Zombie, I think the issue there has less to do with guarantees than with improved likelihoods. And there are actually several "quality" vectors there. A Ph.D. doesn't guarantee that someone will write well, think well, or any of the rest, but part of getting a graduate education is being socialized to frame questions in certain ways - more analytically, one would hope. Or maybe it's just a matter of having a bigger toolset. (And I suppose it goes without saying that not all graduate programs are created equal, which can distort your view of the general value of graduate school if you attended one that was particularly good, or one that wasn't.)

[Kathy G.]

Ninja Zombie, I agree that having a Ph.D. is no guarantee that a person will be a better blogger or writer. I believe that William Kristol, for example, has a Ph.D. in political science, but he's a pretty terrible columnist nonetheless.

But generally, if you have an Ph.D. you have at least some degree of expertise. McArdle often mucks up basic economic concepts in a way that someone with a Ph.D. in the subject probably wouldn't. I mentioned Echidne of the Snakes not only because she's an econ Ph.D. but because I think she's one of the best bloggers out there, and her posts show that she really does know her stuff where economics is concerned.

[Ninja Zombie]

Kathy, regarding Echidne:

The atlantic tends to pick popular unpaid bloggers. Perhaps the shortage of salaried female bloggers is caused by the shortage of high profile unpaid female political bloggers?

Echidne and your other examples are pretty low profile.

Of course, sexism doesn't really explain the dearth of popular unpaid female political bloggers...

[Kathy G.]

Ninja Zombie, I don't think that's true for all the bloggers I cited. Digby and Amanda Marcotte are very high-profile. Hilzoy is not as well-known but is still quite respected. And I didn't even mention the Firedoglake crew, which is predominantly female (and that's one of the biggest liberal blogs there is).

As for the bloggers The Atlantic does have -- well, how well-known is Ta-Nehisi Coates, really? He's good and deserving and all, but he's only been blogging for a few months and his journalism isn't that well-known. And I don't know about other people, but Clive Crook and Marc Ambinder weren't exactly household names (in my house, anyway) before they started blogging for The Atlantic.

And btw, in response to the person who cited Lindsay Beyerstein -- I agree, she is also fabulous. I cited only a half dozen or so female bloggers because I didn't want to get carried away with doing a whole long list. But I did say there are at least a dozen or two female bloggers at least as good as the ones I mentioned, and I'd certainly put Lindsay on that list.

[Echidne]

Thanks for your lovely comments about me, Kathy G. Sadly, Atlantic Monthly wouldn't hire me unless I did one of those public conversions and became a woman who Really Hates Other Women. That's the money field for us ladies in general and for the Atlantic in particular.

As to the value of having a PhD in blogging: It depends on whether that degree shows that you do research carefully or not, but it also depends on how badly the academic way of writing has infected your prose. It took me quite a few years of silent scribbling at home to get rid of all those long words, and they still keep creeping in.

I don't think that a degree is at all necessary in blogging, but knowledge about the area you blog in certainly is. A certain humility is good, too, because everybody who blogs will make mistakes. I'm still working on that as I have lots to be humble about.

Ninja Zombie, popularity in blogging is a tricky topic in some ways. We look at blogging in a way which would lump Shakespeare and cartoons with the NYT in literature, because we don't distinguish between types of blogging. News blogs, for example, get many more readers than expert blogs, just because of their nature (always assuming that both types are written by bloggers of equally lovely prose). The readers of different blogs are not the same demographic types of people and neither are they looking for the same kind of writing. Then there's the question of group blogs and the question of the length of the posts and how many pictures are involved. Some blogs are more like television and some blogs are more like dictionaries that you found in flea markets. I'm in the latter group, I guess.

[Barry]

Ninja Zombie: "Before you get a Ph.D., you think "wow, those guys are doctors. They must be smart." After you get it (a real one, at least, I'm not talking about stuff like "critical theory"), you realize that even the Ph.D.'s are just a bunch of amateurs, and the degree means squat."

Considering the spats on this blog, where your record is basically reasserting LibEcon 101, I'll take your advice with a grain of salt.

[Tim Worstall]

"Or our country's smartest young writer about politics and culture, full stop?"

Amanda? Might I suggest a little more water with it? Seriously, that's either sarcasm too harsh for me to get or you've really fallen off the planet.

[Kathy G.]

Tim, what's your beef with Amanda Marcotte? I know the anti-feminist trolls hate her with a passion, but I have no reason to suspect you're one of those.

I think Amanda Marcotte is an extraordinarily insightful writer about culture and politics. She's the best young writer out there about feminism, and also about the ways of wingnuttery. Michael Berube compared her work to one of my favorite second wave feminist writers, Ellen Willis. Willis had a similar intellectually questing spirit and melded a passionate interest in pop culture with a deep commitment to feminist social democratic politics. I enjoy watching Amanda's mind in action, as she turns a subject over in her mind, probing beneath the surface to tease out the contradictions between what said for public consumption and what is believed and acted upon in private, and in the midst of it all, figures out just where she stands. And also, of course, as she frequently, relentlessly, hilariously skewers her ideological enemies. Just looking back over some of her recent posts, I particularly enjoyed these, for example:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/in_defense_of_femininity/
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/gradations_of_an_anti_choice_wingnut/

I also think she writes better than any nonfiction writer I know about the dilemmas inherent in being a feminist in a heterosexual relationship. For example, see here:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/wedding_rejection/
And here:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/mop_a_mile_in_my_house_slippers/

In the TPM Book Club about Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, I thought her response was by far the most interesting:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/27/overcoming_the_spite_vote/
Her contribution to the TPM Book Club about Katha Pollitt's Learning to Drive was similarly insightful:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/10/01/practically_perfect_in_every_w/

I don't always agree with Amanda, but that's not the point. At her best, she argues her positions with such depth, eloquence, and honesty that I understand exactly where she's coming from, where we agree and where we part company. I would imagine that even those who agree with her a lot less than I tend to would at the very least find her to be a fascinating and provocative read. Though obviously, her writing is perceived as quite threatening by the wingnuts and sexist idiots she puts paid to -- and for excellent reasons! Her bravery in her outspokenness and in the unflinching gusto with which she engages in head-to-head intellectual combat is yet another reason why I strongly and seriously admire her.

If I were an editor, I'd be assigning Amanda book reviews and other longer pieces, because I think she's great and would love to see what she could do in a more formal, extended format. And I have no doubt that a male as smart and talented she is would be getting those kinds of offers.

[Tim Worstall]

"I know the anti-feminist trolls hate her with a passion, but I have no reason to suspect you're one of those."

This is true, I'm not one of those.

"I think Amanda Marcotte is an extraordinarily insightful writer about culture and politics."

Well, there we disagree. I think she's got about the insight into culture and politics that my three legged cat does. But I agree that that is a purely personal and subjective opinion, verifiable in no manner.

I did read (at least skim) those first four posts you mention. They all seem to be the same piece. Amanda and all other women are the victims of patriarchal oppression. Something which, coming from a member of the most privileged group of women the planet has ever seen (modern industrial world women) I take with a pinch of salt.

I've had run ins with her in the past (I read Pandagon properly for a few months). When she made various very odd economic claims I tried to (gently) correct her but was simply shouted down. A willingness to at least consider other viewpoints rather helps the intellectual discours, no?

Given that I'm primarily interested in economics though it's her deep deep ignorance of the subject that really gets me.

That and the fact that she really cannot write, an opinion which I'm not alone in holding.

http://www.bryanappleyard.com/blog/2007/02/amanda-marcotte-and-scary-america.php

[Cruel Jest]

It's hard to imagine a more commonly used phrase than:

"What Digby said." Except for, perhaps, "Bush is an idiot."

It has always amazed me that no one picked up Digby long ago.

[Anonymous]

It's worth pointing out that in the comments on Yglesias' post where he announced that he was leaving The Atlantic, at least one person suggested that they replace him with none other than Kathy G. (Of course, I will admit that this person was going to suggest Ta-Nehisi, but too many people had said that already.)