Grace Reading Series

Hey everybody, Elizabeth here. Jessica DuLong, one of our favorite freelance writers and a Grace contributor, will be guest-blogging on Thursdays in December. She has a perspective on the state of women journalists that I have always found very valuable. Check her bad self out:

Back in October I got the chance to sit down with Jill Soloway, the Grace Reading Series debut author. I couldn't wait to ask about her remark in the introduction of Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants that maybe "making a point" is something men invented.

Instead of making a point, she'd written, maybe her introduction offered "something roundishly holistic that adds up to more of a whoaaaahh, less pointy and more warm, funny, and accepting, like vaginas themselves."

I wanted to know more. Was she just trying for a laugh, or did she really think there's a difference between the way men and women think-and write?

I've been pondering this question for some time, actually. And Soloway's suggestion fed my long-stewing notions about the real reason so few women get published in the big-time, ooo-ahhh magazines: New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic, etc.

These seeds of inquiry were planted three years ago at a conference panel I attended, "Telling and Selling the Narrative Nonfiction Story." Editors representing each of the aforementioned publications held court in a hotel meeting room full of hungry freelancers. Every seat was taken. The aisles were clogged and the walls were lined with writers clamoring to learn the secrets of breaking in.

The panel proceeded as you might expect. Editors painted a grim picture of how unlikely it is for any not-yet-established writer to land a story in their publications. Journalists, meanwhile, scribbled frantically to capture every hint that might make them the lucky exception.

Then, a question from the audience during the Q & A stopped everything. A woman stepped up to the microphone. I paraphrase:

"You'll notice the people in this room," she began, indicating the mostly female audience, "and the makeup of the panel." Mostly men, of course. "Why, with all these professionals eager to write for you, do your magazines publish so few stories by women?"

I was floored by the response: dumbstruck silence.

Here was a panel of the country's top editors and they just halted. This wasn't the hush that happens after someone blurts out some racist comment and all the white people in the room shift in uncomfortably their chairs. This was pure bewilderment.

One editor just shook his head: "I don't know." That was it.

And I believe him. He didn't know. What worries me is that it seemed like the question had never before occurred to him.

I hope that increased public awareness of the stark statistics mean these editors wouldn't be rendered speechless by the same question today. I'd like to think it's an issue they've pondered, maybe even discussed in an editorial meeting.

Perhaps they've read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and know that after screens were erected to hide auditioning musicians, the number of women in the top U.S. orchestras increased fivefold. Maybe they're even instituting their own screens for the editorial selection process.

Truth is, I'm not convinced blind admissions would actually solve the problem.

--JESSICA DULONG

Tune in next Thursday for Part 2!