Today I spent the day at a workshop from the
Op/Ed Project. It was great and I have to thank Amy and Adelaide, the co-founders of
In Good Company, for being up to date on what is important for women out there in this big old world of ours and for alerting the IGC community. I had an eye opening experience and yet I would not have known about this if Amy and Adelaide had not put it right in my face by way of their newsletter!
I took this from the homepage of the Op/Ed Project:
The op-ed pages of our nation’s newspapers are overwhelmingly dominated—80% or more—by men. Because the op-ed pages feed all other media, the under-representation of women here perpetuates and exaggerates the under-representation of women in larger ways. For example, men are:
• 84% of guests on influential Sunday morning political talk shows on TV
• 85% of Hollywood producers
• 85% of nonfiction books on The New York Times best-selling
• 85-90% of radio producers
• 84% of congress
In short, public debate all but excludes half the population.And again in their own words, here is WHAT THE WORKSHOPS DO:
Since women currently do not submit op-eds with anywhere near the frequency that men do, we target and train women experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse. We work with top universities, non-profits, corporations, women’s organizations and community leaders across the nation. We also offer seminars open to the public (women only) in major cities across the nation. Seminar participants are added to a database of women experts, connected with our community of writers and mentors, and go into a feeder system for op-ed, radio, television and other media venues.
BOTTOM LINE: We NEED to get more women to SUBMIT OP-EDS to even the playing fields. I am committed to trying--you know why? Because it's important!
Kudos to Katie for promoting this important message and for recognizing that we can make a change!!!