Sexism: It’s still a thing, unfortunately

Excerpt:

I was grateful to be asked by the church reform group FutureChurch to speak about the issue of women and Catholic media for their “Women Erased” series this week. Perhaps because I am only the second female top editor in NCR’s history — and because building my team has been such an important part of my first year as editor — I decided to focus on whether Catholic media include diverse voices on their editorial staffs. Spoiler alert: most don’t, especially at the top, and we’re even worse on racial/ethnic diversity.

Progress has been made, of course (and props go to U.S. Catholic magazine for having the largest percentage of women on their staff), but as I noted in the talk, having women on the editorial staff is not the only way to center women, women’s voices and women’s issues in our publications. How we cover things is just as important as who covers them, although an organization with few women in the room when those decisions are made is likely to do a poorer job of covering women and women’s issues.