Funmi Iyanda

So it turns out Hope Eghagha is a man sigh! Thanks Ainehi. Whatever happened to gender specific names ehn? It is of course a good piece whatever the gender of the writer but I was so hoping for non mashed brain, puke inducing pieces from women that I was hoping Hope;-) would be female especially since the other writers on the page were female. Of course I put my big foot in it but then doesn't that emphasize the point?

I have since yesterday therefore been asking my newspaper editor friends (mostly male) why this is so. They insist that when the girls come in they insist on going to the fashion, beauty, family and food beat. Is this so? Not that there is anything wrong with those beats which can be written by anyone regardless of gender but where are the brilliant, edgy, irreverent, iconoclastic female writers and journalists cutting across a diversity of areas from politics to nuclear science or car racing? Granted there isn't a lot of that quality even with the male journalists but at least it is much better than the backyard kitchen banter that women issues, opinions and images are reduced to. So is it that the women are not stretching themselves or the industry is just pure testosterone? I would like the opinion of women in Nigerian print media on this.

Have a great weekend peeps!