From Salon:
"The final results are in: The ratio of male to female writers in major "thought leader" magazines is 3:1. Unimpressed? Consider that, of the 1,893 pieces surveyed, a measly 447 articles were written by women.
"Last September Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a deputy editor at Glamour, started the wittily named WomenTK.com, with the aim of tracking the male-to-female byline ratios in five general-interest magazines: Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. It's not shocking that male bylines proved more common -- that's the no-brainer that spurred the WomenTK project in the first place -- but the extent to which men are outpacing women is staggering.
"Of the magazines WomenTK followed, Harper's and the New Yorker were the worst offenders. Over the past 12 months, Harper's published 118 articles written by men and only 17 by women; that's an embarrassing ratio of 6.9:1. The New Yorker's ratio of 4.1:1 is also pretty dismal; out of 556 articles, 109 were written by women.
"Davis Konigsberg -- who has ovaries of steel for taking on Condé Nast, which publishes the New Yorker and Vanity Fair as well as Glamour -- argues that the grim 3:1 ratio supports "Ursula K. Le Guin's hypothesis that 'there is solid evidence for the fact that when women speak more than 30 percent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation.'" We shouldn't equate all men with the male editors of a few "thought leader" magazines, but it's startling to think that female participation can be confused with parity."
