New York Times announces new ‘gender editor’

How much does gender play a role in shaping lives around the world?

Enough so that the New York Times has created a new position of ‘gender editor.’

Former Newsweek editor Jessica Bennett has been named to fill the position, officially assuming the job on 30 October.

Bennett comes with impressive journalistic credentials, among them coauthoring a Newsweek cover story about the women who had sued that magazine for discrimination in 1970.

As a freelancer for the New York Times, she wrote a 2012 profile of Monica Lewinsky, an 2017 op-ed about Wonder Woman, a 2014 story on female pot growers and a 2015 column on ‘resting bitch face,’ among other things.

Even more on point for someone named gender editor, she is the author of the 2016 book, Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace.

Written with a light-hearted but determined manner, the book is billed as ‘part manual, part manifesto’ for spotlighting subtle, and not so subtle, sexist things in the working world.

In a press release, the Times said Bennett will lead a ‘multi-pronged initiative to deepen the engagement of female readers around the world.’

www.jessicabennett.me

Jessica Bennett

Bennet believes gender issues and the content surrounding them ‘needs to exist throughout every section of the paper.’

‘To me, what gender issues means is not simply coverage of feminism or issues related to women’s rights. Though of course that is important, and we’re committed to approaching those issues and approaching them from an intersectional lens,’ Bennett said in an interview with Teen Vogue.

‘So whether that means stories about gender identity, or sexuality, or masculinity, or race and class and how that plays into gender identity, or simply the subjects that the Times already covers — politics, international affairs, science, health. But approaching these subjects through a lens of gender.’

Don’t look for a new Gender section to appear in the paper. You won’t find it. But you will find Bennett asserting consideration of gender issues into every section of the paper – business, politics, news, science, arts, style and sports.

Read more from Source: New York Times announces new ‘gender editor’