I can’t help calling attention to a couple of articles worth reading today.

First:

“New Yorker, Harper’s, NYRB and TNR Editors on the Dearth of Female Bylines”

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about “gender disparity” in magazines. This post includes comments from editors of several magazines with relative few women writers.

The overall message from the editors, delivered with varying degrees of passion, was an agreement that things need to change. There was not much in the way of explaining why things are the way they are — with one honest and admirable exception from The New Republic — and no comment on whether they receive and/or reject more pitches from women, nor on whether or not having more female editors might do the trick. Mostly their message was that they could, and should, do better.

Then there’s Mother Jones’ story on the call to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by someone claiming to be David Koch, which caught Walker making some outrageous statements.

“Did Scott Walker Get Crank-Call Pwned? (AUDIO) UPDATE: YES“

Definitely a good read, although not a tactic for the faint-hearted.

From Human Rights Watch: “US: Lack of Paid Leave Harms Workers, Children”

It reports on a new study of the prevalence and importance of family leave internationally. The bad news: We are living in one of the most underdeveloped countries, when judged on this scale.

Other countries – and international treaties – have long recognized the need to provide better support for working families. At least 178 countries have national laws that guarantee paid leave for new mothers, and more than 50 also guarantee paid leave for new fathers. More than 100 countries offer 14 or more weeks of paid leave for new mothers, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The 34 members of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), among the world’s most developed countries, provide on average 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, with an average of 13 weeks at full pay. Additional paid parental leave for fathers and mothers is available in most OECD countries.

Unfortunately, we’re down at the bottom of the barrel with Swaziland and Papua New Guinea, other countries that provide no paid maternity benefits.

And then there was this little vignette from last week, forwarded by a reader.

“Silent Protest Arrest: Turn your back in silence wearing a Veterans for Peace shirt on a lecturing US Government official at a university and get manhandled, removed and arrested. Topic? Foreign governments repression of freedom of speech and protest.”

From Partnership for Civil Justice:
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.