Hold on to your hats

Hold on to your hats, people. Hold on to your hats and make sure you’re sitting down, because today, the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page is 30% women. Yes, you read that right: 30%.

To put this in context, the last time the Journal ran a woman-penned op-ed was last Monday, and it was co-written by a woman. Their last op-ed written entirely by a woman was on August 20th. Today, the Journal ran four op-eds in total, one by a woman, and another co-written by a woman. This is a big deal. That puts the Journal ahead of the Huffington Post, at least for today (HuffPost’s front page was 24% women). It puts the Journal ahead of NYT, WaPo and Salon, for Pete’s sake!

Perhaps someone at the Journal is reading the Byline Blog…

This is what progress looks like

Today, 100% of the op-ed contributors at The Los Angeles Times are women. That’s right, one hundred percent. Someone get me some bubbly!

This is the first time since we started tracking bylines a few weeks ago that any paper has broken 75%, and I’m not surprised that it’s come from the LAT.  For the last two weeks, they have been ahead of the pack in terms of their numbers of women – two weeks ago, their gender balance was exactly 50-50. The LAT has clearly made a concerted and consistent effort to bring women’s voices into the public debate, and they ought to be congratulated.

What a lovely way to start the week! Let’s hope the rest of the week is as encouraging as today.