a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

What She Said

This month, we invited Jennifer L. Pozner, executive director of Women In Media & News, to tell us about the organization’s new project: WIMN’s Voices: A Group Blog on Women, Media, AND….

The next time some pundit blames the underrepresentation of women writers in corporate and independent media on a supposed lack of available talent, check out the dynamic and insightful writing at WIMN’s Voices.

WIMN’s Voices creates critical space for media monitoring and analysis by, for and about women. Through this diverse online community, dozens of leading women journalists, media critics, scholars and activists (including In These Times Senior Editors Lakshmi Chaudhry and Silja J.A. Talvi) analyze coverage of women in relation to specific news beats. From war to health, race to humor, international politics to pop culture and beyond, the blog illustrates that all issues can be reported as women’s issues.

In the blog’s first month, WIMN’s Voices writers were invited to discuss their posts in outlets as varied as ABC News Now, WomenseNews.org and Clamor. Here’s a taste of a few recent entries:

• Andi Zeisler on Newsweek’s mea-culpa to single women: To celebrate the 20th anniversary of telling unmarried women over 30 (that they were) less likely to marry than to die at the hands of terrorists by 40 …“Marriage by the Numbers” revisits several of Newsweek’s original subjects [from 1986] and finds–whaddya know?– that eight out of 11 (of the original 14) future cat ladies are in fact happily married after all …
• Sonali Kolhatkar on media coverage of Afghanistan: Mainstream and right-wing commentators expressed horror at the barbarism of a country we supposedly “liberated” (after an Afghan man faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity) … Meanwhile, the institutionalized misogyny of Afghanistan’s judiciary has escaped the notice of the media …
• Makani Themba Nixon on gender and race in the latest X-Men film:
  The comic book Storm’s cold blooded, self assured fearlessness conjures up more of a Grace Jones than the cowering, wimpy character [Halle] Berry brings to the screen … Storm’s character was a bright spot in the relentless denigration of Black women in media … The movie series has stripped Storm of her power and the storyline of all its potency …