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Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, addressing a women’s leadership conference in Massachusetts yesterday spoke of the challenges women still faced in society and urged young women to break through the glass ceiling. Only 17% of Congressional representatives are women, and the numbers are not much better in state elected positions.

But it’s not just in political office where women are sorely underrepresented, but political discourse. A new survey by the Op-Ed project has found that only 20% of all opinion editorials in the four big national newspapers – NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal – are written by women. When broken down by topics that women wrote on, the numbers are worse for issues of social and political important – for example only 11% of all op-eds in the big four newspapers were written by women.

The statistics are slightly better in online and college media. Women wrote 33% of all online op-eds and 38% of college paper op-eds.

GUESTS: Katie Orenstein, founder of the OpEd Project, and Taryn Yaeger, director of operations

The Op-ed Project is online at www.theopedproject.org

Click here to read the survey.

There will be a seminar in Los Angeles on June 30th sponsored by Ms. Magazine called Write to Change the World. Click here to find out more about the seminar.