Just heard The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta give an illuminating presentation on the byline gender gap. Garance spent last semester doing historical research on the subject at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. To me, the most shocking statistic that emerged from Garance's work is that although most thought-leader magazines have editorial staffs that are between 30 and 50 percent female, a full 91 percent of contributing writers to magazines--the folks who get the bylines and the glory--are men. 

That was the catchphrase last night of Ellen Goodman, one of the first female newspaper columnists to be both an unabashed feminist and syndicated nationwide. Madhu and I are here in Cambridge, Mass. at the Women, Action, Media! Conference sponsored by the Center for New Words, which used to be a feminist bookstore, but became a non-profit devoted to strengthening women’s voices in the media after the indie shop found it could no longer compete with the big chains.

Goodman, in her sixties, was less than fluent on topics such as race (she had a tendency to talk about “women” as one category, unaffected in their career opportunities by barriers of race or class) and the blogosphere (she seemed unaware of the middle ground between straight political blogging and “mommy blogging”), but her perspective from so many decades in journalism was invaluable. Op-ed writing should tell people what the news means, she said, less that it should tell people what to think. In other words, the best columnists give context. But in today’s opinion journalism landscape, Goodman said, “everyone is now required to be so incredibly certain” about every issue, instead of teasing out complexities and admitting they don’t always have the answers. I think it’s pretty clear that this kind of over-confidence contributed to the media’s war drum beating in 2002 and 2003, and the rash of mea culpas in the years since. But sadly, I don’t see the landscape changing very much. It’s still de rigueur to take an extreme position just for the fun of defending it, and not because it’s correct.

This weekend, The New York Times Magazine chimed in to a growing conversation about women’s work-family balance with a piece arguing that increasing government support for childcare and health care will encourage women to have more babies and start younger, thus staving off a “baby drought.” I’m unconvinced by the argument that Americans need to be repopulating the world with gas guzzlers any faster than we already are. But of course, it remains a serious inequity -- and a drain on productivity -- that American women do 60 to 70 percent of domestic labor even though in today’s economy, 60 percent of us work outside the home (compared to 74 percent of men). And we learned last week that when women move in with a male partner, we start doing more housework while men do less. How romantic.

In an excellent Nation cover story, journalist and historian Ruth Rosen dubs women’s second- and third-shift labor responsibilities the “care crisis.” Amidst the progressive euphoria post-Election Day last November, some feminists were concerned that the new focus on economic populism would elide “women’s issues.” But so often, feminist and labor issues go hand-in-hand. Consider this: In a study of 173 nations, the United States is one of only five that offer no guaranteed paid parental or sick leave. Our Family and Medical Leave Act, currently under review at the Department of Labor, offers workers only modest protections: 12 weeks of annual unpaid leave for health problems, after the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for sick immediate family members. But the FMLA applies only to companies with 50 or more employees, and does not allow workers to take time off to care for adult brothers, sisters, aunts, or uncles who may have no other caretaker. As the Department of Labor considers possible revisions to the law, business interests are pushing for further restrictions...

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