65. NAC and the Globe

Unpublished
9 June 1998

Re: Compeletely NACkered, Editorial—June 9th. You write: “getting women into positions of influence isn’t the biggest issue — keeping them there is.” Is this why too many senior staff positions on the arts, economics and politics at the Globe/ROB are held by male writers? Is it that women (who appear to have been absorbed into the paper’s editorial administration and management positions ) don’t want to write for the Globe/ROB or that men got there first? As for performance evaluations of your “moderate middle” versus NAC’s politics of representation: when are we going to see more journalists of colour writing in the Globe and Mail about their “stories of the world” like owning VW bugs, or learning to play the guitar via computer programmes, or taking cycle safety courses, or critically leading us through every plodding foot of Hollywood celluloid, to other public issues of pressing significance? When it comes to access to the full participation of cultural diversity expected within all cultural institutions for over a decade whose practice has been more of an “anachronism” : The National Action Committee on the Status of Women or the foot-dragging, we-will-continue-to-speak-for-you rationalities of Canada’s “National Newspaper?”