The editor of the New York Times editorial pages said she seldom addresses an audience without getting the question: Why aren't more women columnists featured in her section? Her counterpart at the Washington Post said recently he's working hard to improve that paper's record -- just one in 10 opinion pieces written by women.
The dearth of female commentators at American newspapers is no secret, but the issue turned considerably more public and more rancorous in recent weeks as writer and feminist Susan Estrich intensified a long-running campaign to get the Los Angeles Times to publish more opinion pieces by women.
The USC professor demanded action by The Times and directed her anger at Michael Kinsley, a onetime Harvard Law School classmate and editor of The Times' opinion and editorial pages.
In a series of e-mails to Kinsley -- some of them copied to journalists, who quickly posted them on the Internet -- Estrich questioned Kinsley's mental powers and judgment, predicting his days at the newspaper were "numbered."
Referring to Kinsley's Parkinson's disease, she wrote that "people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment and your ability to do this job."
As a result, Estrich's already icy relationship with the newspaper's op-ed operation has gone into a deep freeze. Kinsley has accused Estrich of "blackmail" and called her comments about his health "disgusting."
"The question of whether the newspaper is giving due visibility to women writers is a legitimate one," Times Editor John Carroll added, in his own e-mail response to Estrich. "The way you are conducting yourself is a discredit to the cause."
Forty-three prominent Los Angeles women signed Estrich's original complaint about gender imbalance, and several interviewed after the furor with Kinsley erupted said they continue to stand by her. They said The Times' shortcomings are proven by recent tallies demonstrating how few women write for the opinion pages.
In the first nine weeks of this year, women penned 20.5% of the paper's op-ed columns, not including staff editorials, which do not carry bylines. That compared to the New York Times, with 17% women writers on its op-ed pages and the Washington Post with 10%.
The confrontation might not have drawn so much attention if the old Harvard classmates did not hold such high profiles, in Los Angeles and nationally.
