How women are losing the pundit war
Margaret Wente
Women often say they’re not the best person to be on a show. Men don’t say that. Women feel they can’t present themselves as experts unless they have total mastery of the subject. Men just assume they have mastery, even when they don’t. Men have more confidence and are more willing to take risks. They don’t worry that they might look like idiots. Women obsess about that. We go home afterward, pull the covers over our heads and hope no one was watching.
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Why is opinion-mongering so male-dominated? My theory is that men regard it as a form of competition – a chance to prove they’re smarter and more dominant than the next guy. Men like winning. They also like having all the answers, and they’re thrilled to share them with the rest of us.
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In fact, the scarcity of female voices in the media isn’t as bad as people think; they’re just not looking in the right places. Foreign affairs and politics, the so-called hard news topics, are still dominated by male voices. But the subjects that tend to interest women more – education, health, food, fashion, relationships – are full of women’s voices. The largest-circulation magazine in Canada isn’t Maclean’s; it’s Chatelaine.