Root Causes

A quarrel between friends as Ezra Klein and Dana Goldstein kick around the paucity of female pundits. Both make good points. Both, however, also concede the relevance of the (very true) fact that you see a lot more male interest (as reflected in, say, New York Times op-ed submissions or American Prospect job applications) in the field. I actually think this is a bit of a red herring. After all, when you're talking about the highest levels of the professional the nature of the applicant pool doesn't matter at all.

Nobody's going to turn down a job as an op-ed columnist at the Times or the Washington Post and you're talking about a universe of maybe two dozen genuinely elite pundit jobs from which you have the entire universe of professional writers (and, as the case of Paul Krugman attests, actually a somewhat wider universe) to choose from -- Virginia Postrel instead of John Tierney, say. It's at least plausible that there's a real applicant-pool problem at lower levels, but not at the highest levels. And I'm certain that if women stopped being underrepresented at the highest levels, the applicant-pool would start evening out soon enough. After all, the paucity of women at the very top of the field -- the most prominent portion of it -- is naturally going to discourage people from thinking that they should seriously try to get their feet in the door.

Comments

Good point. It's a hiring issue. Has a black woman even had one of those two dozen jobs?

Posted by david mizner | October 24, 2006 6:30 PM

My impression is that women are much more highly represented in the jobs of editing op-ed pages -- e.g., Gail Collins at the NYT or Meg Greenfield at the WP -- than in writing op-eds, so the discrimination theory sounds dubious.

This pattern instead fits with the general pattern of women preferring to get a steady salary picking men while men prefer to take their chances on getting paid to trumpet their views to the world.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 24, 2006 7:26 PM

you'd have to think seriously before trying to jump into a pool that had tierney or brooks floating in it...

Posted by supersaurus | October 24, 2006 7:53 PM

Clearly there are women out there who have more to offer than the amazing Mr. McBobo and John Tierney. They are a couple of upper middle class right wing airheads. Tierney in particular seems to have been hired strictly to fill the token role as resident right wing dumbsass. Would the Times not have been better served by hiring Ehrenreich, Lithwick, Pollitt or vanden Heuvel among others. Not only would they bring some gender diversity, but also some ideological broadening of the page.

Dowd is actually another waste of space for the most part -- she has the odd moment of amusing snark, but is also vain and vacuous for the most part.

There has to be better talent, female and male, than the premier newspaper in America currently offers.

Posted by charles gilligan | October 24, 2006 9:25 PM

I don't think the relational question, "which woman deserves the column *more than* John Tierney does", is really the one to ask. Asking that would only narrow it to 3 billion people, some of whom cannot write, and still deserve it more than him.

Tierney is just horrible as an absolute matter, and needs no comparison to show why he shouldn't have the job.

Now let's turn to the other absolute question: which women should get NYT gigs?

How about hilzoy at ObWi, LizardBreath at Unfogged, and Katherine wherever she blogs?

all three of them can write the hell out of a story, and do real research before they write.

All three of them are manifestly superior to most of the male pundits out there. They should get the job.

Also, possibly Digby, depending on how Digby feels about the gender thing this day. Not my place to intrude, though.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 24, 2006 9:35 PM

This debate is, oddly enough, taking place on one of those rare days when Tierney actually has a reasonably intelligent piece in the paper.

The lack of female voices in the opinion pages is particularly odd given the ready supply of female foreign correspondents, particularly at the wire services.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 24, 2006 9:55 PM

can anyone tell me why we should be listening to any opinion of a white male on this topic? five words: you just don't get it.

Posted by razib | October 24, 2006 10:06 PM

The phrase "root causes" seems weird to me at the moment. Because, really, the interesting thing about roots is that they don't just appear magically, they come from seeds which come from plants. So really the phrase should refer to things that are caused in some sort of self-sustaining cycle.

Not that that might not be an appropriate meaning, in this case.

Posted by Christopher M | October 24, 2006 10:20 PM

Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute would be a superb choice. She is a John M. Olin fellow and a contributing editor to City Journal. She also won the 2005 Bradley Prize.

Of course, she is not PC and that probably rules her out.

See http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm for her very impressive CV.

Posted by Peter Schaeffer | October 25, 2006 12:50 AM

I look forward to the thread calling for more female bosses.

I also look forward to thread calling for more cavity searches at the airport.

Posted by Linus | October 25, 2006 1:31 AM

After reading the whole post, I realize this was the thread calling for more female bosses.

It might as well have been the one calling for more airport cavity searches too.

Posted by Linus | October 25, 2006 1:46 AM

PS Now that Femalekind has transformed America into the Kinder, Gentler country the feminists promised it would be - free of war, worker exploitation and prison ass rape - you'd think you should still be able to file for bankruptcy, or no?

Posted by Linus | October 25, 2006 1:59 AM

Hehe,

Are we pretending that raw talent determines who wins in America these days?

Posted by monkyboy | October 25, 2006 3:11 AM

Linus,

The reason it's now so hard to file for bankruptcy is that, just as George Gilder and other reasonable men in the '70s predicted, feminism has led to an entire generation of motherless drug addicts, welfare queens, and gay homosexuals, causing us to lose the Cold War with the Soviet Union and be taken over by Communism. Also, women no longer shave their legs or wear nice clothes, and any men who are foolhardy enough to court them are subject to lawsuits for unwanted kissing or even back pats, which has turned college campuses into deadly no-sex zones.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 25, 2006 5:37 AM

And I'm certain that if women stopped being underrepresented at the highest levels, the applicant-pool would start evening out soon enough.

My goodness is this ever a copout.

Why is the onus placed on "the highest levels"? Shouldn't it be the obligation of *all* right thinking people to help improve the situation? From the highest levels all the way down to the lowest.

In this respect, Matthew seems to be exempting himself from being a part of the solution. Matthew isn't the top editor of the Times, so therefore he has no obligation to help rectify things?

It wouldn't take a lot from Matthew. As I recall, he supports Ezra's quota, right? Why doesn't Matthew institute his own quota as to links? Just a cursory review of Matthew's linking policy shows that he links disproportionately to males...

Posted by Al | October 25, 2006 8:12 AM

Al;

Go back to your remedial reading class. Matt made it clear that the disparity in interest at entry levels was real, but that it didn't apply to the highest level jobs because there are so few. So replacing any of the male NYTers with, say, Dahlia Lithwick would not sacrifice quality at all.

Posted by Marcel | October 25, 2006 9:34 AM

Marcel, you are probably right that the parenthetical "(very true)" states that concern. Still, does that completely absolve lower level editors of any responsibility for remediating the problem?

Posted by Al | October 25, 2006 11:55 AM

MY said:

"After all, when you're talking about the highest levels of the professional the nature of the applicant pool doesn't matter at all."

This doesn't make any sense. People work their way up to the highest levels of a profession. If you don't have a lot of female scientists you are not going have a lot of women who deserve Nobel Prizes.

Posted by James B. Shearer | October 25, 2006 12:12 PM

James Shearer:

Pool of Male Pundits ~ 1 gazillion.

Pool of Female Pundits ~ 0.2 gazillion.

Top Pundit Jobs ~ 24.

Don't you think you could fill ~ 12 positions from a pool of 0.2 gazillion without a significant dropoff in quality ?

Posted by boonie | October 25, 2006 3:19 PM

Andrew Sullivan is quite upfront about how he revitalized his flagging punditry career in the late 1990s: testosterone injections.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 25, 2006 3:57 PM

"The reason it's now so hard to file for bankruptcy is that, just as George Gilder and other reasonable men in the '70s predicted, feminism has led to an entire generation of motherless drug addicts, welfare queens, and gay homosexuals, causing us to lose the Cold War with the Soviet Union and be taken over by Communism."

lol.

I just think it was amusing and naive for anyone to believe that women in positions of authority would behave any more compassionately than men in similiar positions. As a matter of fact, there is a significant body of research to suggest it was naive for anyone to have believed this (though I doubt the research can tell us whether we should be amused by this naievete).

See the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and his proteges. What they found was that while women are slightly more likely to employ an ethic of compassion rather than an ethic of justice (as in judgement) toward significant others (and only slightly more likely) they were no more likely to employ an ethic of compassion toward those outside their circle of blood kin, friends and romantic partners. In other words, female politicians are no more likely to vote to end war, worker exploitation, and prison ass rape than men.

There is also the matter of overcompensation. In my humble and limited experience in life, woman bosses can be meaner and tougher (I won't say more irrational because that might make me sexist) than their male counterparts (perhaps because men can safely triangulate toward compassion, and women have less latitude; this may be an issue with female politicians as well, especially liberal Democrats). My experience is also that female doctors are less likely to dispense feel good drugs than men. (A female friend of mine [and ardent feminist] seeking a perscription for a certain medication for a longstanding condition had the same experience with her female doctor. I suggested she see a man. She did and he gave her the drugs.)

Posted by Linus | October 25, 2006 4:26 PM

And just to be clear: I think the next generation of feminists should focus a great deal less attention on the representation of women in the highest rungs of the society and a great deal more attention on the plight of people - women and men - in the lower and middle rungs of the society.

Posted by Linus | October 25, 2006 4:35 PM

boonie asked:

"Don't you think you could fill ~ 12 positions from a pool of 0.2 gazillion without a significant dropoff in quality ?"

Actually I don't. Assuming a random overall ranking you will be replacing men ranked 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 (more or less) overall with women ranked 27, 33, 39, 45, 51, 57, 63, 69 (more or less) overall. This looks to me like a significant drop off in quality regardless of the value of a gazillion.

Posted by James B. Shearer | October 25, 2006 6:17 PM

Here is a difference between a doctor's ability to perform a procedure, such as abortion, and a pharmacist's ability to dispense a drug. One is about skill, the other is about letting unprofessional attitudes interfere with a job. WBR LeoP

Posted by Drugstore | March 10, 2007 6:29 AM