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Why Don’t Women Read the A-Section?
Thanks, Dahlia, for your response to my post the other day, and for raising the good question about whether women, especially young women, are more "politically checked out" than their male counterparts. Such questions are one reason I get so amped about overly simplistic feminist rants—they just get tempers flaring and obscure the problems that we can actually work on.
Looking back at the two columns you referenced—a piece wondering if feminism was out of style and the ombudsman's (ombudswoman's?) column in the Washington Post—I have to say that, once I get past the hand-wringing in von Hahn's column, I can relate to her concern more. She seems to be worried that women are paying more attention to low-brow pop culture than concerning themselves with big issues, while Deborah Howell of the Post thinks that we gals would read the paper more if only it had nice stories about parenting and relationships. (Apparently, she missed our discussion of that Page One piece about yuppie parents a while back.)
If men are generally staying better abreast of the political news, I'd bet they're also more politically active, and as such, more likely to have their voices heard. And the squeaky wheel gets the grease, yadda yadda. So therein lies a concern for women. As for what to do about it, it's hard to say. We can't go all Clockwork Orange and strap women into chairs with their eyes peeled open to make them read the A-section. Could we make the hard news more anecdotal, with more personal stories about how the war or congressional legislation or Supreme Court decisions affect everyday people? There's already plenty of that out there, and politicians have bogarted that technique (let us not forget the S-CHIP brouhaha) to such a degree that it's now a tired cliché. I can't offer any solutions myself, but I'd love to hear ideas.
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