Author Archives: margotmagowan

What if van Gogh took Prozac?

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So begins Peter Kramer’s excellent book Against Depression. Kramer is also the author of a better known work, Listening to Prozac.

I was intrigued by the book because anti-depressants have always sort of disturbed me; I wondered if they were ‘happy pills,’ too widely prescribed, especially to women. Are Zoloft and Paxil supposed to drug people into conformity and complacency? I also wrote an op-ed for the SF Chronicle in 2001 about the dubious marketing of the drug Sarafem and the billions of dollars huge pharmaceutical companies stood to make just by essentially giving Prozac a new name.

In Against Depression, Kramer writes that during his book tour for Listening to Prozac, wherever he went or spoke, invariably, someone in the audience would smile and ask the witty question: What if Kierkegaard had taken Prozac? Hemingway? Descartes? Kant? Hegel?

Kramer argues we have romanticized depression to the extent that we now believe that great art and important thought come from the neurotic mind. Kramer believes the contrary, that depressed artists managed to create not because of their depression but in spite of it.

He also believes the foundations of Western civilization are based on depressive thinking, that the Greeks, from whom the origins of Western philosophy, art, and government all come, were depressives.

Kramer writes:

“Once the vogue of melancholy is enshrined in literature, once the depressive perspective is identified with the poetic, once the pattern of narratives of self-development is set– art accepts and plays with these forms. As depression, like dysentery and epilepsy and the rest, declares itself a disease, our valuation of depressive art might seem an anachronism, the remnant of a tradition required to mitigate and justify otherwise inexplicable sorrow.”

Kramer states that some qualities of the disease of depression– alienation, hyper-sensitivity– have been romanticized, while other common and frequent symptoms (disorganization, poor memory, irritability, difficulty changing intention into action, paranoia, anxiety, lack of resilience, vulnerability to harm, paralysis, hostility, and impatience) have been downplayed or ignored. Kramer argues depression is a disease of brain abnormalities, partly attributable to decreased blood flow to different parts of the brain.

Kramer believes that alienation– the ability to step back and look at the culture or political bodies while separate from them– can be a useful skill. But getting stuck in alienation is a sickness. Depression is a ‘stuck switch,’ an impairment in the stress/ response system. Basically he’s saying artists don’t need a little bit of depression to create art any more than women need a little bit of anorexia to be fit.

I was particularly fascinated by Kramer’s analysis of the Greeks because I was a philosophy major in college back in the nineties when post-structuralism was popular. We learned how the Greeks had sent us all off on the wrong track by dividing the world into binary oppositions such as good/ evil; right/ wrong; mind/ body etc. Science has shown the mind and body are not as separate as once believed. We now understand this kind of either/ or philosophy leads to all kinds of distorted thinking, including racism and sexism by creating perpetual constructs of the self as separate from ‘the other.’

Kramer’s polemic is similar to the post-structuralists in that he also argues the Greeks were somewhat off base. He writes that many Greeks were depressives including Heracles, Ajax, and Bellerophon. It’s interesting to think about. What if the foundations of our Western thought were created by depressives? What if it’s this kind of training (and the depressed part of your brain) telling us we need depression to make art? And finally, could these thousand year old standards of equating great art with depression be contributing to our culture’s failure to nurture and recognize women artists?

Just like male artists, many women artists are depressives, Virgina Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the list goes on and on. Studies also show that women fall victim to depression more than men. But there are also far more male artists, novelists, and writers than female ones. Perhaps, depressed men can get away with having lives, having families, and making art. Whereas depressed women are mostly just depressed. Women are well -trained to put up with the self indulgent behavior that accompanies depression, giving husbands their required space while tending to the kids. But few moms can afford to fall victim to the tortured artist prototype. Not if you have kids and want to get anything accomplished. Being healthy is your best bet.

Kramer writes that the main symptoms of health are striving to create and possessing the energy required to do so. Not getting overwhelmed or stuck. That model seems far more conducive to fostering women artists than depression.

Geena Davis optimistic about gender roles changing

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Geena Davis tells the Wall Street Journal that when she presented her data to filmmakers about the lack of girls roles in kids films, they listened, were surprised, and promised change.

Davis tells WSJ:

 The whole idea for me was I wanted to take the facts and go back to the people who are creating the media. We go straight to the studios and the producers, the Writers Guild, the Animators Guild, the Casting Directors Guild, and present our research.

The fascinating thing that we found from the beginning was that they were absolutely shocked.

The fact that, in general, all of their movies are so lacking in a female presence is stunning to them. That makes it, obviously, not a conspiracy, not a conscious choice, and leaves them very open to rethinking it and saying, “Now that we know, we’re going to make some changes.”

New study finds ‘huge gender imbalance’ in kidlit

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The Guardian reports on a new, extensive study on gender in children’s books by Florida State University Professor Janice McCabe that found male characters far outnumber girl characters. This lack results in “a symbolic annihilation of women and girls” in the real world.

The gender disparity sends the message that “women and girls occupy a less important role in society than men or boys.” Here’s just one stat: “Male animals are central characters in 23% of books per year, the study found, while female animals star in only 7.5%.”

The Guardian reports:

The authors of the study said that even gender-neutral animal characters are frequently labeled as male by mothers reading to their children, which only “exaggerates the pattern of female under-representation”. “These characters could be particularly powerful, and potentially overlooked, conduits for gendered messages,” they said. “The persistent pattern of disparity among animal characters may reveal a subtle kind of symbolic annihilation of women disguised through animal imagery…”

“I guess the challenge is to write books for boys that have female characters in, that the boys will relate to. It’s a sad fact that books written for boys do tend to fall rapidly into the old stereotypes, and the action figures, baddies etc are generally male, and very straightforward males as well. I try to get away from that. It’s a been a while since I wrote an action-type book, but I am working on one now and it does involve four young people – two girls, two boys – and I always try to make my girls really stand out.”

But it’s not only an absence of female central characters which is a problem in children’s books, believes former children’s laureate Anne Fine: it’s how the women are represented when they do appear. “Publishers rightly take care to put in positive images of a mix of races, but seem not to even notice when they use stereotypical and way out-of-date images of women,” she said”…

The notion, meanwhile, that boys only read books by and about males does “become a self-fulfilling prophecy”, Fine said. “More worryingly, in these new lists of recommended books for boys, there’s a heap of fantasy and violence, very little humour (except for the poo and bum sort), and almost no family novels at all. If you offer boys such a narrow view of the world, and don’t offer them novels that show them dealing with normal family feelings, they will begin to think this sort of stuff is not for them.”

Fine believes that “women should be giving a much beadier eye to the books they share with children … It’s important to balance much loved old-fashioned classics with stuff that evens things up a bit and reflects women’s current role in the world,” she said.

What about dads reading to kids? But otherwise, great points. These stats are sad, but still, I’m happy to see that the gender disparity in the imaginary world is getting more and more attention, because its so obvious, yet so accepted, it’s paradoxically invisible. Back in 2007, I wrote about the sexism in the blockbuster movie Ratatouille for the San Jose Mercury News after I went to see it with my four year old daughter. You can read the full piece here, but here’s an excerpt:

After I saw “The Lion King,” I wanted to know: Why couldn’t the lionesses have attacked weak, old Scar? Why did they have to wait around for Simba to come back to Pride Rock to help them? I was told: that’s how it is in nature – lionesses need a male to lead the pride. So a lion can be best friends with a warthog and a meerkat without gobbling them up, but a lioness heading a pride? That could never happen in the animal kingdom!…

The hyper-concern for gender accuracy in the fantasy world extends to things like plush toys – when I refer to my kid’s animals as “she,” adults invariably do a double take, checking for manes or tusks: even female toys must stay in their place.

If you watch classic Tom and Jerry now on a DVD , there’s a note on the screen before the cartoon begins recognizing the racial stereotypes and explaining about the era it was created. There’s no mention about gender whatsoever. There are hardly any females in Tom and Jerry at all. Unless there’s a love interest, then she’s got bright red lips and bats her eyelashes constantly as Tom and Jerry compete over her. I guess she’s just part of our 2011 era.

Gender gap persists in imaginary world

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Why write fiction?

I’ve always loved to, but I also felt like it didn’t matter as much. Writing about politics and culture is important. If you write about ‘issues,’ you can use your writing to change the world. Or try to. Making up stories might be fun but what’s the point?

Then I had three kids. Of course, I read my daughters stories, watch movies with them, and also, TV shows. I witness how the stories they listen to shape their imaginary play, how they dress, who their heroes are, the language they repeat, the art they make, and their own creative writing.

In her best-selling book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein writes extensively about children’s brain development, how babies don’t come into the world with fully formed minds that we, parents, are just supposed to observe and discover. Their brains are constantly being formed, rapidly growing and changing as they take in language, pictures, adult reactions, and all kinds of stimuli. Neurons fire in reaction, neural pathways are formed, and connections are created, assimilating the outside world to create the internal one.

So I’ve got to wonder: How might kids’ brains (and then, of course, adult brains) be different if the stories they were exposed to weren’t so dramatically and predominantly shaped by men?

If you ever doubt fiction is important in forming our deepest reality, beliefs, and actions, look at the most influential historical novel of all time: the Bible- not known for its female authors or kindness to women. We’re still fighting wars based on these ancient, repeated, and recycled stories.

One reason the stereotypes in kidlit are so sad is because we’re supposed to be experiencing fantasy, magical worlds. Yet, what we see, way too often, is the same sexism, depicted in cartoonlike proportions, that exists in the real world.

What would our world look like if most great artists, film directors, and novelists were women? And had been for thousands of years?

Here’s just one modern example of how reality shapes fiction and fiction shapes reality. Every year, Forbes Magazine does a survey on the richest imaginary characters. This year, the list includes tycoons like Scrooge McDuck, Richie Rich, Smaug (the dragon from J. R. R. Tolkein) Bruce Wayne (of Batman) and Mr. Monopoly.

Of the gender gap on the list, Forbes‘ Michale Noer writes:

“There are 14 male characters on the list and one female character on this year’s Fictional 15. Sadly, that’s not unusual. There are always women on the list, but too often, only one.

The highest-ranked woman ever was ‘Mom’ from the television show Futurama, who placed fourth in 2007, with a fictional net worth of 15.7 billion. Lara Croft, star of the Tomb Raider video games and movies has appeared on the Fictional 15 three times since 2005. There have never been more than two women on the list in a single year.

Our fictional reporters- the best in the business- have worked hard to rectify this gender imbalance, even breaking the Fictional 15 rules against folkloric characters (the Tooth Fairy appeared in 2010.) But the gap persists.

Some female characters are perennial candidates. Miss Havisham, the well-off spinster from Great Expectations, is considered every year and dismissed on the grounds that she simply isn’t rich enough. And at every fictional story meeting, someone is sure to nominate one of Disney’s princesses, usually Snow White or Ariel. One problem here is that you need to infer their wealth from the fact they live in castes and wear fancy dresses. They aren’t known for being rich within their fictional worlds the same way as C. Montgomery Burns or Bruce Wayne.”

Forbes‘ Caroline Howard gives this explanation:

“Why so few? The answer is quite simple: a small pool of candidates. For some reason, authors, screenwriters, directors, and comic book artists haven’t been creating many ultarich female characters. that is equally true for writers of yore, present and those tackling future or fantasy.

Kind like the real world. Look at the Forbes Worlds Billionaires list. A paltry 1.5 % are self-made women- 19 out of 1,210. And if we include heiresses and widows, that makes 103 ladies, or just 8.5%.”

Obviously, a crucial step towards ever achieving gender equality is imagining what it would look like. Does anyone know what that would be?

Women kiss and tell in new book

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Sugar In My Bowl, edited by Erica Jong, is a collection of essays and short fiction about female sexuality by writers like Julie Klam, Fay Weldon, Jennifer Weiner, and many others including me. The book is coming out June 14, but you can preorder it on Amazon.

Sugar In My Bowl

Gail Collins, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, has a hilarious essay in the book that describes how her Catholic education warped her perceptions of sex.

She writes: “I was possibly one of the least sophisticated teenagers in the United States outside of Amish country, and although I knew the mechanics of how babies were made, I had not yet really come around to imagining that people actually did that kind of thing voluntarily.”

Until Collins was well past puberty, she believed that virginity was the same thing as being unmarried and was completely mystified by whatever was going on between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. She warns that’s what can happen to a girl when she’s “taught about sex by women who didn’t have any.” That would be nuns, who, apparently, had all kinds of special insight into gender differences:

“Boys were not much more than little sex robots, and they could not be held responsible for their actions. Once, we were all called to assembly to hear Charles Keating, the head of the Citizens for Decent Literature (and future star of a huge savings-and-loan scandal), who told us the story of a young mother who went walking down the road with her two small children while she was wearing shorts. The sight of her naked legs so overwhelmed a passing motorist that he swerved off the road and killed both the kids. And it was all their mother’s fault. We were then asked to sign a pledge never to wear any kind of shorts, including the long Bermuda ones.”

In another great essay, novelist Min-Jin Lee writes that it wasn’t until her husband pointed out to her that she’d left sex out of her writing that she realized she had. Re-examining her literary heroines (and their creators) including Emma Bovary, Jane Eyre, and Hetty Sorrel, all scandalous for their day, Lee writes: “Looking backward at my betters made me realize that I was shy at best, cowardly at most. Okay, I was terrified to write about sex. Why?”

Lee, a Korean-American, traced part of her reticence back to a disappointing class she took in college called “Women’s Studies and Asian-American History and Literature” that didn’t inspire her quite as she’d hoped:

“Alas. In print and visual media Asian women were often hookers, mail-order brides, masseuses, porn stars, dragon ladies, submissive sex slaves, and yes, cartoon characters with long black hair, red lips, and racially improbable bosoms. Asian men were sinister gangsters, inscrutable businessmen, angry nerds, and scheming eunuchs. If Asian women were oversexual, then their brothers were asexual.”

Twenty years later, after her conversation with her husband, Lee googled “Asian women” and got 14 million hits, mostly sexual references in the same genre as her college course.

“I may see myself as a forty-two-year-old writer, mother, wife, and former lawyer, but fourteen million hits trumped my subjective reality.” This distortion changed Lee as a writer. From then on, “When relevant, I wrote about sex, even Asian pornography and date rape, because I wanted to be honest about what was significant inside and outside my world. For most of my adult life, I had been uncomfortable with my body- my racial and sexual envelope. This time, in my pages, I thought, maybe I can talk about how it is for me, and I wrote it down. If I had been angry about the lack of self-determination of Asian women’s bodies and lives, I had been staging a feeble and arrogant protest by refusing to write about sex.”

One of my favorite pieces in the anthology is by critic, novelist, and New Yorker contributor Daphne Merkin. Her essay– about how she abandoned a prestigious literary fellowship to pursue the magnetic lust of a summer romance– shows how sexual obsession colonized “all the available mental space in my head.”

My story is called “Light Me Up.” I wrote it because so many love stories, especially those with female protagonists, end with ‘happily ever after,’ when the girl gets the ring. I wanted to introduce a newlywed couple and then throw some scary challenges– involving sex, money, and a new baby– their way.

You can read an excerpt from Sugar In My Bowl here.

New anti-abortion law breaks records

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I was never sure how long it would take me to decide whether or not to have an abortion. Now I know! Thank you to South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard for stipulating that all women need 72 hours to make this personal decision. It’s a relief to have this kind of clarity. Especially from a leader who, I’m sure, can totally relate to what it’s like to be pregnant.

Yes, it’s true that yesterday, Governor Daugaard signed a law stating that a woman in South Dakota who wants an abortion must undergo a 72 hour waiting period, making his state the first one in the country to require such an extensive waiting period. (There are 25 states that require a 24 hour waiting period.)

According to the new law, a woman who lives in SD must also get counseling from a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ before having an abortion.

What is a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’?

Ms Magazine reports:

Currently, there are an estimated 3,500 CPCs nationwide, most of which are affiliated with one or more national umbrella organizations. CPCs often pose as comprehensive health centers and offer “free” pregnancy tests. Some CPCs coerce and intimidate women out of considering abortion as an option, and do not offer women neutral or comprehensive medical advice. Often CPCs are run by anti-abortion zealots who are not licensed medical professionals.

It’s hypocritical– not to mention paternalistic and unrealistic– for so-called small government advocates to legislate how long a woman should ruminate– be it 24 hours or 72 or 102– on whether or not she’s going to have an abortion. Before going to get an abortion, women have considered their lives and their situations and what they need to do. But South Dakota’s invasive law may only be the first of many like it to follow. The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Dozens of bills are advancing through statehouses nationwide that would put an array of new obstacles-legal, financial and psychological-in the paths of women seeking abortions.

The tactics vary: mandatory sonograms and anti-abortion counseling, sweeping limits on insurance coverage, bans on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy…they add up to the biggest political threat since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide.

…Mary Spaulding Balch of the National Right to Life Committee have been scrambling to keep up with legislative developments: “Until the bills get on the governors’ desks, it’s premature to claim victory. But it’s moving faster than it has in previous years. … We’re very pleased with the progress thus far.”

If you are going to be in the Bay Area next Monday, you can do something for reproductive rights. Go to the Power of Choice Luncheon which Dagmar Dolby has been leading since 1996.

Women, alcohol, and sleep

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Science Magazine reports on a new study that shows alcohol affects women’s sleep more than men’s.

It’s long been known that alcohol can deepen sleep during the early part of the night but disrupt sleep later in the night, something called the “rebound effect.” But there’s been little research into how alcohol’s effects on sleep may differ in women and men.

This study included 59 women and 34 men in their 20s who consumed either alcohol until they were drunk or a non-alcoholic beverage before they went to bed. Researchers then monitored the participants’ sleep.

Women who consumed alcohol had fewer hours of sleep, woke more frequently and for more minutes during the night, and had more disrupted sleep compared to men who drank alcohol.

In my own life, sadly, it’s true that alcohol radically affects my sleep. And because I love sleep more than anything, I’ve practically given up wine. I blogged about my experience with drinking and sleep here, “No Wining, It’s Bedtime” on Drinking Diaries, a great site that “serves as a forum for women to share, vent, express, and discuss their drinking stories without judgment.”

Is Eminem still too controversial to win Grammy?

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Is Eminem too controversial to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Over the years, Eminem has won 13 Grammys but he’s never been recognized outside of the rap genre. This year he was nominated in ten categories including Song of the Year and Record of the Year, along with 8 other nominations. He walked away with just two wins: Best Solo Rap Performance and Best Rap Album.

Eminem rocketed to fame over ten years ago as a rare successful white rapper, with songs that included controversial lyrics about raping his mom and killing his girlfriend. He disappeared for several years, then staged a comeback in 2010 with his brilliant album “Recovery.”

“Recovery” is nothing less than mesmerizing. For me, it’s like listening to Bob Dylan; every time I put it on, even after listening a million times, I hear something new. It’s pretty fascinating to witness Eminem’s transition from Slim Shady who sang about all kinds of violence against women to his recent hit “Love the Way You Lie” which shows a deeper perspective on the issue. That song also features Rhianna, well known as a victim of violence from boyfriend Chris Brown. Rhianna has been pretty silent on the events that happened to her, making her decision to show up in this song, in some ways, her most significant commentary.

With “Recovery,” as always, Eminem brings issues to the forefront many people would prefer to ignore or pretend don’t exist. Sexual violence against women happens every day. It hasn’t gone away; Eminem’s music, in every stage, forces listeners to recognize this epidemic exists.

Here’s something I wrote about Eminem for the Chronicle in 2000

I Prefer My Misogyny Straight Up.

MARGOT MAGOWAN

Wednesday, July 12, 2000

I LIKE hip-hop music. I know I’m not supposed to because so many of the songs have horrifyingly violent, sexist or homophobic lyrics.

Hip-hop is also the most innovative thing to happen to music in a long time.

When you compare hip-hop to its biggest rival for domination of the music charts – the corporate-created Backstreet Boys and N’sync, and pop-pincess clones Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera – rappers/ producers like Dr. Dre and Method Man are infinitely more talented. Hip-hop is captivating precisely because it tells a story, overlaying lyrics on top of familiar backbeats, creating songs that are at once new and familiar.

The story hip-hop tells may be disturbing or degrading, but that’s no reason to shun it. As art has always done, hip-hop describes our times, exposing a sometimes ugly world- of drugs, sexism, poverty and violence- that middle-class America may prefer to hide away.

In the ’60s, Bob Dylan enraged those who upheld the status quo. Today, we have a whole new slew of musical poets.

Just like they did with Dylan, the older generation asks, “How can you listen to this awful music? There’s no melody! And those lyrics!”

Baby boomers protest that THEIR songs were about peace and love, while hip-hop celebrates killing and humiliates women.

But surely rock ‘n’ roll stars have never been known for their kindness to women. The Rolling Stones cranked out hits like “Under My Thumb,” “Brown Sugar” and “Little T & A,” sneered through lyrics like “You make a dead man come” and glorified violence in songs like “Midnight Rambler.”

Sexual violence in lyrics wasn’t limited to bad boy bands either. Old peaceniks Jerry Garcia and Neil Young sang songs like “Down by the River” about murdering a lover. Ever since Elvis shook his pelvis, music has shocked, and the older generation just didn’t get it.

Critics charge that hip-hop crosses a line, most recently fingering rap sensation Eminem, who sings about raping his mother and slicing up his wife in front of their daughter.

Freud (looking like Archie)Freud 

But Freudians would tell you Eminem’s mother rage and sexual fantasies are pure id, the uncensored subconscious struggling for self expression. The views of Sigmund Freud, of course, are infamous for his distorted views on women, though that doesn’t stop us from studying him in our best educational institutions. Nor should it.

Hip-hop may be more shocking and graphic than your run-of-the-mill shapers of Western thought, but I prefer my misogyny straight up. Movies like “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts plays a prostitute with a heart of gold, may be prettier packaging, but if you think women are “hos,” just tell me so.

Tales of sex and violence aren’t limited to male artists. “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks and Macy Gray’s “I Committed Murder,” two recent hits by women artists, both detail violent killings with unrestrained glee. Angry young women muttering obscenities include Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love and Ani DiFranco.

Nor is disdain for men by women artists a new fad. Sylvia Plath, the late poet and darling of English lit majors, famously compared male genitalia to turkey necks and gizzards. Never one to shy away from sex or violence, she once said she “eats men like air.”

The difference, of course, is when women say these things, it really is just art. Because men are the guys with power, their expressions of domination, violence and sexual exploitation contribute to a culture where women really are forced into limited categories of queens or hos, where masculinity is defined by how many babes you score, and where women often are left powerless and exploited.

But sanitizing music is just shooting the messenger; it can’t transform a sexist culture. Warning stickers on CD covers are no protection from the deeply entrenched social realities that hip-hop pushes right in your face.

Women won’t feel threatened by lyrics when they overcome real inequities and get real power. Women will then be too busy making art and making deals to waste time wondering if they should side with the radical right, clamoring to keep obscenities out of Wal-Mart.

Peggy Orenstein’s Yes List

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Cinderella Ate My Daughter author Peggy Orenstein put together her list of  best books and products for girls. And boys! She writes, reminding us boys benefit from hearing stories about girls too. Duh! But as a mom of three daughters, sometimes I forget. Great to have this resource, and I for one, am happy PO clarified about Roald Dahl. I, too, LOVE this man as a writer but something in his story-telling doesn’t quite sit right with girl empowerment.

Why the gender bias in the media?

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The grassroots women’s literary group VIDA just released some frightening statistics about gender bias in publishing.

The New York Review of Books has 462 male bylines to 79 female, about a 6-to-1 ratio.

The New Republic has 32 women to 160 men.

The Atlantic published 154 male bylines and 55 female.

The New Yorker reviewed 36 books by men and 9 by women.

Harper’s reviewed more than twice as many books by men as by women.

The New York Times Book Review had 1.5 men to 1 woman (438 compared to 295) and an authors-reviewed ratio of 1.9 to 1 (524 compared to 283).

VIDA’s report has ignited the blogosphere with many commentators wondering, as Patricia Cohen does in the New York Times: Why? “What the numbers don’t explain is whether men write more books (and book proposals) than women or whether they more frequently and aggressively ask magazine editors for assignments.”

But this isn’t an either/ or situation; women face challenges at both ends: publishers and editors are biased to think that men’s stories are the best and most important ones, deserving of publication and reviews; and, women writers, socialized to those same beliefs, agree and don’t try hard or often enough to get published.

This double-challenge doesn’t only affect women writers; it muzzles women’s voices across all media.

For many years, I worked as a talk radio producer, and I had a difficult time getting women to agree to go on air, both as invited guests and as call-ins to the show. At first, I didn’t get it. Talk radio is practically a democracy, anyone can just pick up the phone– so why weren’t women calling?

At the station I worked for, all four of the full time hosts were male. The General Manager, Program Director, and News Director– the top three positions– were also all male. When women hear male voices talking about stories that matter to men, they’re not as likely to call in. So that’s not rocket science.

But here was the deeper mystery to me. Yes, I worked for a male host, but I suggested many of his show topics to him; they were often issues I cared about; I booked most of his guests. I also chose which callers went on the program in what order, and I gave preference to women. Sponsors, themselves, want more women listeners because women are consumers. So why was the show that I produced still so dominated by male voices?

Women are afraid to go on air because they worry that they don’t have the skills to be effective. If one woman did make it on the show, immediately after hearing her, more women would call in. But still, after making a great comment to me when I screened her, she’d often say: “Can you just pass it on? I’m too nervous to go on the show.”

When I invited a woman to come on the show as an expert guest, it was not unusual for her to decline. She’d tell me that she wasn’t really qualified, and then she’d recommend someone ‘better,’ often a male colleague. In the seven years that I worked in talk radio, guess how many men who I called up recommended someone else speak instead of them? Not one. Never happened.

Like a persistent suitor, I refused to take the woman’s first no as an answer, spending a lot of time convincing her to go air. Not only did I repeatedly tell women that their ideas were important, but I coached them on how to deal with the aggressive host who they were afraid to talk to, and I gave them tips on how to respond to other aggressive callers. Talk radio may be democratic in some ways but the verbal sparring can be brutal and you need to know how to play to win. And want to win.

My experience in talk radio showed me that if women had some basic training, at least part of the gender bias in media could be overcome. But it’s not the producer’s job to coach and train women. So I cofounded an organization, the Woodhull Institute, named for Victoria Woodhull who was the first woman to run for president; she also published her own newspaper. Woodhull trains women in professional skills including negotiation, advocacy, and public speaking; Woodhull also trains women in media skills, including the ones Patricia Cohen wondered about in the New York Times, such as how to pitch stories and how to write and submit book proposals.

One training I do at Woodhull is to ask every woman to name three areas where she’s an expert. She can list anything from neurosurgery to breastfeeding to finance; but she has to ‘admit’ publicly, that she knows what she’s talking about. Most women have a hard time with this exercise at first. But after completing the session, they’re much more comfortable owning their expertise.

Another thing I teach Woodhull women is how to link the issues they care about with front page news stories. They need to make their issues sound newsworthy in order to get coverage. It’s a simple skill, but many women don’t have it. When I was a producer and women did call me to pitch, especially progressive women, they often they acted as if I should put them on air because I’m a good person; I should just care about the issue. But, again, male or female, that’s not a producer’s job. Her job is to help to create a timely and entertaining show that will boost ratings and attract sponsors.

You know who is the best of the best at pitching that I ever heard, hands down? The Hoover Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Instead of trying to pull me off into some tangent that had nothing to do with my job, Hoover and Heritage turned it around, making me, the producer, feel as if they were lending a hand: “Did you see the front page article in the New York Times about WMD? We have a Fellow who is extremely qualified to comment on that.” Let’s just say Hoover and Heritage aren’t exactly known for their glut of female Fellows.

Change will continue to be slow for women until they recognize that their stories and their viewpoints are important. All the producers and editors and media magnates in the world can’t help women get their voices out there until they decide to try. And keep trying. Because people will tell them, repeatedly, that they aren’t qualified or have nothing to say or, for whatever reason, don’t deserve to speak.