By: E&P Staff A Women's eNews commentator says one reason why there aren't more female Op-Ed columnists is that they tend to get more vicious e-mail than their male counterparts.
"When new female writers are bolstered by the moral support needed to survive the onslaught of anti-female sentiment flooding their inboxes, more women's bylines will show up on the opinion pages," Heidi Schnakenberg wrote in a
piece posted today on the site of Women's eNews, a nonprofit news service.
Schnakenberg, a part-time Des Moines Register columnist who's also written for other newspapers, quoted Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman as believing there's a gender gap when it comes to hate mail. "My wife is also a columnist, and there is a huge difference between the types of abuse I get, and what she gets," he said. "It's much worse for her."
And Schnakenberg related some of her own early experiences as a columnist. "I was called everything from 'bitch' to 'whore' and was often addressed as 'sweetie' or 'honey' before a launch of expletives," she wrote, adding that she found "no mentors and little support from editors."
Schnakenberg continued: "I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different."
Only about 10-20% of Op-Ed pieces are written by women, noted Schnakenberg. And, as E&P
reported last year, just under 25% of syndicated opinion columnists are female.
"While numerous professions -- science, medicine, and even journalism -- have seen a sharp rise in female participants, opinion journalism doesn't seem to budge," wrote Schnakenberg.
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