In the last two weeks, nearly one in three NYT obituaries has been devoted to women -- a jump of 150 percent over the four previous weeks, when nearly nine out of ten published NYT obits went to men.
The sudden awareness that notable women are also dying comes in the wake of a post from the anonymous, cranky NYT blog known as The NYTPicker, which first noted the NYT's ongoing habit of publishing the vast majority of its obituaries about men. Prior to the last two weeks -- in which the NYT has published six obituaries of prominent women, and 22 men -- in 2010 the paper had noted the deaths of only 92 women, while reporting the demise of 606 men.
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5 comments:
I hope they all died natural deaths.
Now if the BOOK section would find as many female authors to write about as dead women in the obituaries after what is seen as a response to a little current publicity about it . There's no question that male writers are reviewed in much greater percentages than woman writers. This has also been "noticed" on major internet blogs in the last month.
Guys just don't seem to notice this stuff by themselves. My husband never has a clue when I point this stuff out to him. Sometimes he even gets a little irritated.
Then sings my soul,
My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul,
My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
It should also be noted that since 1981 the words "breast cancer" have appeared in the NYT more than twice as often as "prostate cancer" although the number of people diagnosed with each disease is approximately equal each year.
Significantly, the only section of the paper where "prostate cancer" is more frequently mentioned than "breast cancer" is in Obituaries.
Yes, that makes sense. It is okay to perpetuate women as sick, weakly, and in need of defense or cure, but apparently regarding women as competent authors or notable figureheads in death is not so easily achieved without conscientiousness and great effort.
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