Women are significantly outnumbered in leadership roles
across many sectors — the corporate world, elected governmental positions,
academia and so on. We’ve heard the statistics time and again, and they are not
surprising anymore.

While some would
say this fact screams deliberate discrimination, other factors necessarily play
into the notably small female representation in highly visible, highly
opinion-focused roles. When asking why women hold only 16 percent of U.S.
Congressional seats, one also has to ask why women are less likely than men to
run for those offices.

It could be the case that women do, in fact, face more
hurdles than their male counterparts in seeking leadership positions, or that a
corporate and political world currently dominated by men is intimidating and
uninviting to potential female participants.

It could also be the case — and the issue warrants discussion — that women are
generally less drawn to very visible positions and duties that call for them to
be opinionated and candidly ambitious.

Editor & Publisher in 2005, for example, reported that only 24.4 percent of
the columnists at eight major news syndicates were women; the female columnist
staff at The New York Times News Service numbered just 12.5 percent at that
time.

Again, numbers like these may immediately hint at employer bias favoring men
for jobs in the op-ed department, but a more telling statistic from Fred Hiatt
of the Washington Post is worth noting. According to Mr. Hiatt, 80 to 90
percent of the op-ed submissions The Washington Post receives come from men.

If women are hesitant to voice their opinions and are reluctant to take on
roles that not only allow them but require them to be vocal about important
issues, underrepresentation is likely to follow.

To be sure, this trend is not limited to far-off leadership roles in big
business and major national newspapers. At this newspaper, for example, I am
the only female columnist on the opinion staff and, admittedly, had to be
coaxed into committing to weekly column inches. Indeed the opinion editors here
are open to taking on female writers, so my solo presence indicates that other
females on campus might share my reluctance.

It would be difficult to dismiss the possibility that the newspaper statistic
and this reluctance stem from a tendency in women to not want to put themselves
— their opinions — out in the path of potential critique, dissent or attack.

In a recent editorial piece for The New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg
discussed an encounter with female college writers and her challenge of their
hesitations to be more confident and opinionated in their writing. Their
concerns, she said, allowed her to see "the cultural frame these young women
have grown up in." She could "hear them questioning the very nature of their
perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of
their thoughts."

Ms. Klinkenborg invited her young female audience to realize their opinions do
matter; It is unfortunate that women sometimes need that reminder, but the culture
of polite, self-negating silence surrounding women can lead to a regrettable
gap in public dialogue.

Yet there is more to this issue. Even when this gap in public dialogue is
filled with women willing to be vocal and opinionated, too often women feel
confident only in writing about women’s issues.

On the Oct. 21 edition of Meet the Press, for instance, Tim Russert hosted an
"extraordinary group of ladies," as he put it, and moderated a discussion that
revolved, for the most part, around women’s issues and the upcoming election.

During the interview, Judy Woodruff commented on Hillary Clinton’s impact on
the presidential race, saying, "She’s influenced the way we cover the campaign.
You have an all-women panel here this morning. We could call you an honorary
skirt."

Why would an all-female panel be any less relevant to an issue not related to
women? Or, more generally, why do women feel more safe, more confident, more
compelled to write and opine primarily about women’s issues, and why is it
often expected that women will do just and only that when they indeed choose to
be vocal and opinionated?

An individual’s gender is simply not relevant when discussing many of the major
political, economic and social issues affecting modern society, and women have
as much a stake in the conversation as do men.

Inviting women to participate on discussion panels is one thing; giving opinion
section column inches to women is one thing. Women acknowledging their opinions
and taking initiative to make themselves heard is another, and, whether or not
female reluctance to publicly vocalize their opinions is actually as pervasive
as some suspect, it is something that warrants attention.

Kate Maternowski ([email protected])
is a senior majoring in English.