Thread by @N_Jayaram

Earlier today, sent the following email to A.S. Panneerselvan, Readers' Editor of The Hindu @the_hindu:

In today's edition of The Hindu as well as in too many previous editions, all the articles on the editorial page as well as the Oped page have been authored by Hindu males,...

two of them Tamil Iyengars.
Please also note that those invited to counsel young people on choice of careers -- see advertisement, Career Counselling, Making Career Decisions Simple, Page 3 of the Bangalore edition, The Hindu today -- are all Hindu males,...

most likely all upper/oppressor caste.
Anoo Bhuyan @AnooBhu, who is among those this email is CC'd to, once made an open offer, that if you organise a panel discussion, name the topic and she can suggest a number of female experts in the field so that you can avoid a 'manel'.

It would be good to hear from the likes of the late Rohith Vemula and the late Dr Payal Tadvi. It is never too late to course-correct:

The brilliant Dr Maroona Murmu, Jadavpur University professor who has been the subject of vicious trolling over the past few weeks would, for instance, be someone The Hindu ought to consider inviting to write Oped page articles.

I am not suggesting that you pursue diversity for diversity's sake but because it fetches fresh or different perspectives rather than what is available in the TamBrahm echo chamber.

You wouldn't want the following done to your edit and oped pages, surely?
cbc.ca/radio/asithapp…
Best Regards
...

Geeta Seshu @geetaseshu , co-founder of freespeechcollective.in to whom also the email was CC'd, responded as follows:

QUOTE
Ouch! Important issue. Mind-boggling invisibility.

Shreya (who goes by the twitter handle @iconohclast) found that The Hindu has a disproportionate number of male oped writers. She surveyed three newspapers in February this year and here's what she said (dated Feb 29, 2020):

Of the 115 #OpEds in @the_hindu, 29 featured women, with nine joint bylines. Seven men got more than one byline this month, including Praveen Chakravarty, Satish Deshpande and Mohammed Ayoob. Have excluded in-house reporters/editors.

She does say :
Happy to note @the_hindu achieved the all-woman #OpEd on 8 February, featuring Suhasini Haidar; Neetika Vishwanath & Preeti Pratishruti Dash, and Jagriti Chandra's Ground Zero.

The other newspapers she surveyed didn't do very well:
Of the 80 in @htTweets, women got 21 op-eds, including 4 joint bylines. Women got the opening #OpEd 4 times. Regulars-Barkha Dutt (2) & Yamini Aiyar (1). Namita Bhandare wrote twice this month. Tanvi Madan is the 4th woman.

and in IE:
Of the 116 #OpEds in @IndianExpress, women got 27 bylines. This includes three joint bylines. On IE's 'The Editorial Page', women got top billing thrice--Radha Kumar, Veena Das & a joint byline of Rohini Pande & Charity Troyer Moore.
How do we change this?
Geeta Seshu