Where are the women on Wikipedia?

I’m a little late on this, but according to a new study reported in The Wall Street Journal, only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are women. It is fascinating to watch another form of media – a very influential one, whether we like it or not – with its rate of women’s participation hovering between 13% and 17%. As we at The Op-Ed Project have observed, this range is where most forms of media are at:

15% of op-eds are written by women, 15% of radio and TV producers are women,  16% of guests on Sunday morning political talk shows are women and 17% of Congress is female.

What is it about this range? How do we get out of it? And how do we change the fact that The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page is even less than 13%?

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…

Final numbers for weak, er, week 4

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend, and the fact that the every block in the entire city of New York smells like barbeque.

It wasn’t a great week on the nation’s op-ed pages this week. Neither Salon nor the Washington Post had a single woman columnist all week, and even the usually equitable LA Times can in at a dismal 22% women. After that kind of week, I think we all deserve a holiday.

That said, as you can see from the table below, the New York Times had rather a good week; in fact, they had more women contributors this week than they have since we started tracking bylines a month ago, so kudos to the NYT.

Paper	HuffPost	LA Times	NYT	Salon	WaPo	WSJ
%age women	24	22	28	0	0	4

Next week, I’ll be writing more about what women write about when they do write, something I aimed to do this week, but with so few women-penned columns to discuss, the task was rather difficult. Let’s hope that next week provides us with more to talk about!

Happy Labor Day, and for those of you who are barbequing, remember that while humans are carbon-based lifeforms, there is no reason for everything you grill to be black.

It’s opposite week

Yesterday felt a little bit like opposite day. The WSJ had a woman and the NYT and Salon had none. Is it opposite week?

Today, the LAT and Salon have no women. While I congratulate the WSJ on what is, for them, an estrogen-heavy week, I’m a little perplexed about what’s going on at Salon and LAT. Where are the women? Even at HuffPost, which usually hovers around 20%, has had two 10% days this week.

We started this week so strong, with a 100% day at LAT. It couldn’t last forever, but it would have been nice to see it last a few days.

In other news, don’t miss this piece by OEP alum Mazan Asbahi. It’s rare and important insight into what it means to be a Muslim in America.

Wrapping up week 2

Here we are at the end of another week, our second of counting bylines. The numbers for this week are as follows (stay tuned for spiffy graphs!):

LA Times: 30% women

Washington Post: 25% women

Huffington Post: 21% women

NYT: 17% women

Salon: 11% women

WSJ: 6.25% women

Comparing this week with last, we’ve seen improvements at WaPo and HuffPost, and lost ground from LAT and Salon. The NYT has been consistent over the last two weeks, and of course, 6.25% from WSJ is huge.

Ladies, if these numbers make you less than happy, you can do something to change them. You can write 750 words about something you feel strongly about, and submit those words to a newspaper. Submit it to The Wall Street Journal, or one of the other papers that had very few women on its op-ed page in the last two weeks. Let’s show these papers just how many women experts there are out there, and how dramatically public discourse can be improved by including them.

A true hump day

Sigh. Today was not a good day for women on the op-ed pages of America. Not a single woman to be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon or – no surprises here – The Wall Street Journal.

Honestly, when WSJ finally prints an op-ed written by a woman, I’m going to dance a jig and shave my head. Simultaneously. This is their thirteenth consecutive day without a woman-penned op-ed. That’s two-and-a-half weeks without a woman on the op-ed page!

On the bright side, The Huffington Post did very well today: 27% of their op-eds were written by women, making today their most equitable day since we started tracking bylines last week.

So congrats to HuffPo, and as for the WSJ – well, let’s just say I haven’t started practicing my dancing or sharpening my razor yet.

The findings: week one

Welcome to a new week at the Byline Blog! Last week was our first week of tracking op-ed bylines in the nation’s most influential papers. The findings were fascinating.

The strongest performer by far was The Los Angeles Times: exactly 50% of its op-eds were written by women. Not far was Salon, with 33.3%.

After that, the numbers drop off a bit, with The Huffington Post at 17%, The New York Times at 16.6% and The Washington Post at 15%.

In last place was The Wall Street Journal, which in the week of August 10, published not a single woman-penned op-ed. Not one.

Granted, one week does not a sample size make, but I have to wonder, when I look at The LA Times and The Wall Street Journal: are we seeing the beginnings of a pattern?

A week without women

Last week, I noted that The Wall Street Journal had, for four consecutive days, failed to publish any woman-penned op eds. Well, it seems that the paper continued the trend as the weekend approached: last week, the Journal didn’t publish a single woman-penned op ed. Not one. That’s pretty pathetic.

The Byline Survey officially started today, and I’ve been making my way around the op ed pages of about eight major outlets, including the Journal, to see how many women are published on each of them. Based on today’s numbers, I can only conclude that making a conclusion on a sample size of one is really bad research. My former statistics professor would not be impressed. Stay tuned for conclusions based on credible sample sizes!

While you’re waiting, check out this wonderful op ed by OEP alum Maria Cadenas.

Way to go, Wall Street Journal!

As you know, our official survey of the op-ed pages nation’s most influential print and online media outlets begins on Monday. But based on some preliminary findings, I wanted to note that today is the Wall Street Journal‘s fourth consecutive day of excluding 50% of the population from its debates on healthcare, foreign policy, the economy and all the other important issues facing our country.

For the fourth day in a row today, the Journal‘s op-ed page is entirely male-penned. Not a single woman’s voice to be found.

Women control 83% of household spending in this country, so why are their ideas 100% absent from the country’s most influential financial news source?