Where are the women magazine writers? asks Mallick

That buzz saw that the editor of Harper's walked into was Heather Mallick. The columnist, late of the Globe and Mail and for some time now writing for CBC.ca, essentially shreds him* for misogyny, condescension and being boring.

"...he is a Tennessee-educated insular boor who has made this well-intentioned American magazine even more boring than it used to be, which is a trick and a half. Read it nowadays and sink into an ennui with knobs on. My other problem with Roger D. Hodge is that he's not an inch as bright as former editor Lewis Lapham. If Hodge had another brain, he'd have just the one. Plus, his magazine radiates misogyny. Only an editor with a mission to fail would be so insulting to the women who are a third of his subscribers.

While allowing that Canadian magazines have a somewhat better record on reflecting the work of women writers, Mallick quotes a tally by the American website WomenTK showing that the proportion of female writers in major U.S. titles in no way reflects the fact that women make up half the U.S. population (a ratio of 1:1).
* Vanity Fair 2.7:1.
* The New Yorker 4.1:1.
* The Atlantic 3.6:1.
* Harper's 6.9:1

Mallick points out that six of the 12 Harper's issues from September '05 to August '06 had one or no female writers.

Having found himself facing the pointed end of a conversation with Mallick, the hapless editor manages to impale himself on it in an e-mail response:

" 'You don't read Harper's because of the sex or race or the regional background or ethnicity of the contributors, '[Hodge said].

"That's what women are to Hodge," [said Mallick]. "We are a minority group, even though we are half the human population. The fact that we make most household purchasing decisions or that more women read magazines than men means nothing. Just another pushy interest group of three billion."

*(the link is to rabble.ca. You can also read the column at cbc.ca, where it was first published on February 23)