Women Excluded from Germany's Opinion Pages

German newspapers are full of clever commentaries, artful rhetoric and ideas. But an evaluation of national papers shows that editorials are almost always written by men. As the business gender quota debate rages on in the country, the female half of the population is being denied an influential platform. Those who care to learn about the situation for women in Germany can turn to the country's highest authority. The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth has devoted an entire brochure to its clientele. On page 51, in a chapter entitled "Women and Career," it says there are a growing number of women in the media working as game show hosts and presenters. Congratulations chromosome comrades, we did it, one might say. The stage lights are blinking happily, full of expectation, now that the question of female emancipation has nearly been solved. Showing us the way to the spotlight are blonde-highlighted saviors like television personalities Ulla Kock am Brinks, Carmen Nebels and Sonja Zietlows. Onstage they make a good impression, even if it's while engaging in meaningless chatter. The state of journalism, however, is far less promising. "In national newspapers women are not well represented in high-level positions," the ministry writes, soberly stating a fact that has been heavily debated since 350 female journalists wrote an open letter to the editors in chief of the country's leading newspapers in late February. At almost all of the national newspapers, top editors are men, and they decide what goes in the papers. But who writes the newspaper content? The important debate over a potential gender quota in company boardrooms -- as important and correct as it may be -- shows that leadership power alone isn't enough. The power of opinion is also necessary. Thus, an experiment. SPIEGEL ONLINE surveyed editorialists' genders at eight leading German newspapers over three weeks, from the end of February to the middle of March. The result? Women have neither power nor an opinion platform. Only about 18 percent of all editorials were written by women (see sidebar). That rate was saved by one paper, the independent, left-leaning Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung, known as the taz, which is also headed by a woman. Without that paper and its numerous female editorialists, the biggest German newspapers only offer a women's point of view a measly 14 percent of the time. A Different Perspective Hardly anyone would dispute that there is value in the fact that men and women are different, or that they have differing ways of communicating and thinking. At least not those, who in the context of the gender quota debate, assert that women, unlike men, don't push themselves to the forefront often enough. Women are more likely to take a gentler tone. There are whole seminars that tackle the topic of how women can be more masculine, always on top, always giving it their all. But a gentler tone can also be clever, pointed , competent, enriching and worth reading. It's just that there are so few such voices. Women journalists who have little to say should start at the conservative paper Die Welt, if not the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, also known as the FAZ. These papers mainly employ women who prefer to be reserved, working behind the scenes with a sense that when it's important, giving way to male colleagues is the appropriate choice. For these three weeks, women wrote only two of the 39 editorials that appeared on the front page of the FAZ. That translates into a rate of 5 percent and put the paper in last place in terms of gender diversity. The "intelligent minds" the paper boasts about almost always belong to men. Die Welt has a similar rate at 8 percent. The mass-circulation daily Bild also seems to share the opinion that men are opinion-makers. It allowed women to write just two editorials in that period, which translates to a rate of 10 percent. The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung has a rate of 13 percent, which is still far below average. Berlin daily Der Tagespiegel allows one out of every four editorials to be written by a woman, which is about the same percentage as the left-leaning Frankfurter Rundschau. Dismissing Half of the Population At the taz, the only paper in the survey that is led by a woman, and a place where things have always been a little different, there is actual equality. What a sensation! Drum roll, please, for 52 percent of commentaries competently written by females about privacy, elections, bankruptcies and civil wars (instead of handbags, wrinkle creams and child care, which are considered their usual domains). At SPIEGEL ONLINE there are no regular editorials, but with one exception, almost all the commentaries written during this period were from men. So what now? Shut up and continue plugging away? Absolutely not! Something must change. Not out of empathy, kindness, fairness, or a guilty conscience, but because it's bad journalism. High-quality national media cannot afford to dismiss 50 percent of its potential target group. When men alone are allowed to explain the world, they address only men. Men form about 63 percent of the FAZ readership and 62 percent of Die Welt readers. Newspapers that let female editorialists have their say, and not just once a year when commentaries are dominated by the gender debate, have a higher female readership. It is vital to understand that not only have women been allowed to vote in Germany for the last 94 years, but that they are also interested in politics and even the economy. Women don't just need newspapers to carry home cut flowers from the weekly market. Recognizing Women's Potential is Necessary, Not Nice Skeptics should note that newspaper researchers have long since found that for women the topic is not the deciding factor for which articles they choose to read. Yes, they read the sports pages, even about soccer. What is crucial is the treatment of the article. More context, more feeling, more personality, more relevance, more balance. Not just numbers, but also their meaning. Not just quotations, but also their context. Not just a theory, but an antithesis. The success story of the centrist weekly paper Die Zeit shows how gender equality pays off. On the front page articles about children, church and cooking take their place alongside stories about war. Of the eight editorials that appeared during the evaluation period, three were from women. Half of the readership is female. The proportion of women in newsrooms is far greater than at leadership levels. The gender quota debate shows how flexible the numbers are. Editors in chief have made attempts to push women from the dusty corners of the masthead into the spotlight of statistics. But it's not just about position, it's also about influence. The editorials are the main stage of print media, and women should be there! This is an appeal to willing women writers and their superiors. Male communication is often more clear, because subtexts leave little room for big egos or self-doubt. Women regularly fall into the trap of justifying themselves. Male writers often express a viewpoint as if they were sun kings representing the majority viewpoint. Female writers argue, ponder, think out loud and in the end they are accused of having no opinion at all. Otherwise, why so many words? If editors in chief complain that they cannot find willing and able female colleagues to write editorials, perhaps they should consider whether they are just too busy looking for those who are like-minded.