Avenger of the Week | The New York Times' David Leonhardt

If you saw David Leonhardt’s opinion piece in The New York Times this week, you may have guessed that he would be our Avenger of the Week — and not just because he gave us a shout out.

photo credit: The Aspen Institute [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr

Even more important, Leonhardt publicly declared that he doesn't quote enough women in his weekly New York Times column. After making a concerted effort to cite more women in his daily email newsletter, he now includes 40% women writers. His weekly New York Times column, however? It turned out to be a totally different story. Leonhardt discovered that only 20% of people cited in the column each week are women, so he is speaking out: 

If a discussion of, say, economics or politics that’s dominated by one gender seems a little strange to you, then you should feel deeply uncomfortable with the actual public dialogue on those subjects. Once you start paying attention, you can’t help but notice how shockingly male it is.

And he has gone a step further and created a great resource by making available Twitter feeds of women experts in several typically male-dominated fields.

When @DLeonhardt realized his weekly @NYTimes column didn't cite enough women, he went from counting to action and created Twitter feeds of women experts to raise their voices. #avengeroftheweek #genderavenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-david-leonhardt