Even when news stories are about issues central to women, the press overwhelming quotes men.
Today's lousy jobs numbers may go some way to refocusing the election on the economy. But despite the Romney campaign's best efforts to make the economy central, and political scientists' insistence that it's the single best determinant of who will win in November, much of the political conversation has been about women's issues this year. This week, it was sex-selective abortion; the week before, congressional Republicans tried to ban late-term abortions in D.C.. Earlier, there were battles over whether employers should be forced to cover birth control and the Planned Parenthood funding saga.
Those issues have been unavoidable for anyone paying attention to the news, but you've probably most heard about them from men. Though it's hardly shocking or novel that men are overrepresented in media and punditry, it's horrifying how true that is even for issues that primarily concern women, as this graph shows (larger version here). On abortion, eight out of every 10 commentators are male. It's only slightly better for birth control. 4th Estate, the media-tracking project that produced this graphic, says "women's rights" is the issue with the most parity, but men are still a slight majority there, too (4th Estate says the category involves any story not directly or specifically related to the other three -- so, for example, the hubbub after Rush Limbaugh called activists Sandra Fluke a "slut").