EDGE WISE: Voices, views, visions of women of the Berkshire region

EDGE WISE: A new weekly column that moves women’s voices to center stage. Women of the Berkshire region, you are hereby invited to make this space your own! EDGE WISE will appear weekly, and my hope is that you will take full advantage of this opportunity to share your views and visions with readers of The Berkshire Edge.

It is with great delight that I begin a new series of columns at The Berkshire Edge, dedicated to opening a door for women’s voices, views and visions to be heard in the Berkshire community and beyond.

Why do women need a column of our own, you might ask?

Sadly, the statistics on women in the media are still telling a story of inequality. According to the 2013 VIDA Count, along with the 2014 Status of Women in the Media Report produced by the Women’s Media Center, male voices still dominate every form of media, from film and TV to newspapers and broadcast networks to news wires and social media news outlets.

There are many reasons why we are less likely to hear from women in the public sphere, but experts from Carol Gilligan to Mary Pipher to Deborah Tannen point to a tendency for women of all ages to be more cautious in expressing their ideas in a classroom or professional setting, and thus to have less experience in speaking up in public.

This gender difference appears in grade school, where boys are more likely to raise their hands and be called on, whether the teacher is a man or a woman. Over time, this pattern translates into a society where it’s so normal for male voices to predominate that we don’t even notice it happening.

In my 25 years as a higher education professional, I’ve sat through countless meetings where the men in the room have dominated the discussion. I can remember one particular group that met regularly for years, where although the chair of the committee was a woman, and there were more women in the room than men — each one a highly educated, competent professional — still, we women had trouble getting a word in edgewise as the men’s loud, forceful, opinionated voices rumbled on. Even the chair could be seen raising her hand in frustration, trying to get a moment of airtime for herself or to create an opening for one of her female colleagues.

What was happening here? These men were kind, considerate souls who would never knowingly discriminate against women. I believe that they honestly were not aware of the gender dynamics in the room, and unfortunately all of us women were too polite to point it out to them. The men had been socialized since childhood to speak up, and the women had been socialized since childhood to defer to them.

After a while we women would just sit back in our chairs and catch each other’s eyes in bemused resignation. It simply wasn’t worth the effort to try to get our voices into the conversation. We knew we’d talk later, amongst ourselves, and get things done by other channels.

Chart of women writersNow, imagine this scenario multiplied over and over in classrooms and workplaces, in committee meetings and family dinner tables. Look at the front page of The New York Times or other national media outlets and you’ll see it happening there too; the 2014 report of the Women’s Media Center documents a typical month of front page articles featuring 65 percent male sources vs. 19 percent female sources, with 17 percent of unspecified gender. Men hold two-thirds of the newsroom jobs in the American media, and the opinion pages are dominated by white males in particular. Broadly speaking, we live in a society where the public sphere is dominated by male voices.

Here in the U.S., we’re fortunate that women have access to education at every level, and protection from discrimination in the workplace. But still, in subtle ways that we women ourselves often re-inforce, women’s voices tend to be quieter in public. Exceptional women who break out of this mold know they’re in for trouble, too — look at how often Hillary Clinton is criticized for being “too masculine,” “too loud,” “too abrasive” — and how the media gleefully seized on the moment, in her 2008 campaign, when she broke down and shed a public tear.

BFWW 2013

I founded the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers in 2011 to provide more opportunities for women of all ages and from many walks of life to share their perspectives in writing and in public speaking.

At the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, we believe every woman and girl has an important story to tell and the capacity to eloquently write and share it. In strengthening the voices of women and girls, we strengthen our communities, making our society more balanced, more vibrant and more truly representative of who we are.

We women need to overcome the conditioning that keeps us quiet; we need to practice speaking up and vigorously engaging in conversation with others. And men need to get into the habit of listening to us, too; men need to become more mindful of the women in the room, doing their part to welcome women into dialogue.

Women of the Berkshire region, you are hereby invited to make this space your own! EDGE WISE will appear weekly, and my hope is that you will take full advantage of this opportunity to share your views and visions with readers of The Berkshire Edge.

Write about what interests you, what you feel passionate about, what you know others will find intriguing. Topics don’t have to have a specific Berkshire tie-in; you can write about your local community, of course, but also about issues of state, national, or international import.

In EDGE WISE, we’ll be sharing women’s perspectives on the environment, on health, on education, on parenting, on relationships, on technology, on politics, on the arts…in short, on every aspect of our complicated, fascinating contemporary lives.

Be bold! Be edgy! Be yourselves! We are all looking forward to hearing from you.

See submission guidelines here or contact Jennifer Browdy for more information: Jennifer@berkshirewomenwriters.org.