The Doctor is in the White House
In a matter of just a few days, the Wall Street Journal managed to turn an insulting article about Dr. Jill Biden’s rightful use of her hard-earned title into a much more serious insult. The controversy began with an op-ed by a long-time opinion writer who urged the next First Lady to drop the title “Dr.” from her name. His patronizing tone was consistent with other writings in which he equated diversity with a diminishment in quality.
The intense critical response to the article focused on the blatant gender bias that permeated the piece. A man with a college degree used the power of his platform to belittle a woman with a PhD, triggering every woman who has ever been passed over for, or paid less than, men with fewer qualifications that they may have helped train.
The author seemed to suggest that a PhD in Education from the University of Delaware was not prestigious enough for the use of a title best reserved for those who administer medicine. He then suggested that her degree lacked value because a PhD is no longer difficult to obtain. No proof of that, of course, but perhaps the author was remembering a time when he had to trek to school uphill both ways.
The outrage was so strong that the Wall Street Journal finally issued a statement — in defense of its misogyny. Taking a page from the president’s playbook, the editor of the Journal’s opinion pages doubled down and blamed the democrats. The defense mixed words like cancel culture, identity politics, and gender card into an incomprehensible statement that served only to reinforce the many barriers women continue to face within the media.
Diminishing Degrees and Suppressing Voices
It is hard to imagine that a female writer choosing to address the use of “Dr.” by graduates of PhD programs would have done so in such a dismissive and gendered way. And, hopefully, a female editor might not be so tone-deaf as to respond to the widespread outcry by foolishly blaming a political party, with no self-reflection as to why the piece provoked such extensive anger.
It is hard to know for sure, of course, because opportunities for women on the editorial pages of major publications remain limited. The Op Ed Project, created to increase the number of unrepresented voices in the media, reported in its 2012 Byline Survey Report that women represented just 20% of the bylined opinion articles in traditional media outlets. Two years later, a study of the editorial pages of 10 major US newspapers revealed that opinion writing remains a male kingdom. Today, the Op Ed Project reports that the representation of women in the country’s most influential expert forums has increased to 26%, an improvement but still not representative of this nation’s diverse expertise.
The outcry over Dr. Biden’s title was raw and telling. It was anger at a writer unable to contain his disdain for a successful woman whose pedigree apparently did not measure up to his own myopic standards. But more than that, it was anger at a system that so easily provides a national platform for a meaningless, albeit hurtful, piece, while so many diverse voices are silenced by their inability to access these same outlets.
As we emerge from this extraordinarily challenging and painful year, it is the opinion writers who will pen the first draft of history. That draft should be told through the perspectives of a broad array of diverse voices.
By doing so, we can only hope that the arc of the story will be less about the title a woman uses and more about the opportunities she has to succeed after receiving her degree.
Lauren Stiller Rikleen, president of the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, speaks, trains, and consults on building a respectful and inclusive multi-generational workplace. She is the author of The Shield of Silence: How Power Perpetuates a Culture of Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace. and You Raised Us, Now Work With Us: Millennials, Career Success, and Building Strong Workplace Teams
