In 2013, Adrienne LaFrance found that out of the 136 articles she wrote that past year, only 25 percent were female sources. In 2015, that number declined to 22 percent.

In 2018, Ed Yong, wrote about his effort to “fix the gender imbalance” in his stories. That is, he actively sought women to share their expertise. He notes that it wasn’t easy. Women, he writes, “face long-standing stereotypes about their intelligence”; “they receive less mentoring”; “they’re less likely to be invited to give talks”; and “they have to deal with significant levels of harassment and abuse.”

It is no wonder then that men are more quoted, more sought out to share their expertise, and dominate any given op-ed page.

In collaboration with Media Matters for America, we conducted an analysis of foreign policy guests on major news programs. The results read like a time capsule from the 1950s: In 2016, women made up just 24 percent of guests. Of trained experts networks call upon, they are even less than that. If you see a woman on cable news talking about foreign affairs or national security, she’s likely a reporter or news personality, not a trained expert or a diplomat.

That’s troubling. Worse, it’s dangerous.

Among the challenges that the world faces today: climate change, energy resources, extremism, epidemics, poverty, nuclear war, and cyber-attacks. Yet, somehow, we continue to underutilize a valuable resource to address these challenges: women.

Journalists are, for a number of reasons, not connecting with female experts for stories and perspectives on a number of topics. Among the reasons they’re not: perception. Female experts either feel that they aren’t as prominent or visible as their male counterparts – or are not seen in that way.

Interruptrr is focused on identifying, nourishing, and unleashing female expertise – in traditionally male dominated focus areas such as banking, cyber, defense, economics, engineering, entrepreneurship, finance, investing, national security, nuclear war, science, and technology. How do we do that? (That’s the next page)