As Larry Summers fights for his career today up in Cambridge, we thought it apt to pick up a weekend thread that TAP's famed Garance Franke-Ruta began involving women in journalism:

While the LAT flap with Michael Kinsley and Susan Estrich last week focused on the dearth of female voices on that paper's op-ed page, Matthew Yglesias points out that the LAT has twice as many female op-ed writers as the other major papers--that is two instead of one:

The LAT has two woman columnists (Margaret Carlson and Patt Morrison), while the the NY Times (Maureen Dowd), the Washington Post (Anne Applebaum, pictured), and the Wall Street Journal (Peggy Noonan) all have one.

Referring to Friday's Howard Kurtz online column, Garance writes:

Of course, Kurtz is quite right to point out that there are very few women in punditry and on newspaper op-ed pages, and his more general point -- "[O]ur country needs more women pundits. I've never quite understood why--unlike, say, boxing--it's a male-dominated field" -- comes as a welcome one.

I suspect Kurtz might be able to drum up some very interesting answers (and great anecdotes) if he called around and asked some of the womenfolk in the opinion biz, or at the partisan mags, why this is. Lord knows I've had enough conversations with my female colleagues at this and other publications about the question.