Kim Clijsters will play against Venus Williams in the U.S. Open semi-finals tomorrow—and as the New Yorker's Lillian Ross points out, Clijsters is one of only nine mothers to ever play in the tennis tournament. Clijsters had a daughter, Jada, whom Ross describes as a "blonde morsel" (aw), in 2008. She left the sport in 2007 to start her family and then made a comeback last year, winning the 2009 U.S. open. Ross discusses how professional tennis players—male and female alike—negotiate the work/family balance, when being a pro-athlete is a fairly all-encompassing profession. There's something called "Kids' Court" at the U.S. Open. It's a day-care service provided for what Ross describes as "main-draw players," like Clijsters. She leaves Jada there while she plays.

Ross interviews '80s tennis star Chris Evert for the brief article, and Evert says there's no way she could have been a mom while she was competing. "As a woman, you have to be very patient and flexible and nurturing, with breast-feeding and all that. I was married to my career. I knew I had to wait to have babies." Evert, born in 1954, is of the baby-boom generation, while the current pro-tennis playing moms and dads Ross writes about (27-year-old Clijsters, 29-year-old Taylor Dent), could reasonably be described as part of Generation Y. While Evert's focus on tennis was singular, Clijsters and Dent's attitude toward work-life balance cottons with the stereotype about their generation's feelings on the matter: That balance is considered a top priority. How lovely that the U.S. Open has created Kids' Court so that players like Clijsters can enjoy her daughter and her tennis simultaneously.

Tags: Chris Evert, Kim Clijsters, tennis, U.S. Open, venus williams

Last December, Publishers Weekly was put on notice for its gender discrimination by the organization I co-founded called Vida: Women In Literary Arts. PW’s Best of 2009 list included exactly zero women writers in the top 10 and proportionally few in their top 100 category.

Now, the American writing community seems to be waking up to the unbalanced reality of our literary culture. Last month, authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner called out the New York Times Book Review for their slavish devotion to all things Franzen and the ghettoizing of "chick lit," which sells heartily but gets no respect from the critical literary establishment. (Read more DoubleX coverage of the “franzenfreude” here.)

While the issue of defining chick lit is an important and complex task, it obscures the larger picture of the present publishing landscape: Women writers of every stripe and flavor, including those in the category deemed "literary," are less likely to receive the kinds of ongoing critical and financial recognition that sustain and grow a writing career over a lifetime.

So far the media conversation surrounding this issue has been largely anecdotal. To that end, Vida spent the last months counting pretty much every prize, review, award series and publication you can think of, along with every major magazine’s table of contents, to see what the data over the last decade actually reveals. Over the next months we will be rolling out the statistics on our Web site for everyone to consider. To briefly summarize what we’ve discovered, the numbers generally indicate that if you’re a writer who happens to be a woman in any genre, you’d better be ready to spend your time clapping politely as your male friends pick up the majority of significant prizes, grants, awards, publications, and review coverage.

Just this week, senior editor Ruth Franklin, wrote an article that appeared on the New Republic’s Web site shaming the New York Times for their nonresponsiveness to the Franzen fuss and their overall poor numbers in reviewing books by women. But Vida’s preliminary count reveals that between Feb. 4 and Sept. 2 of this year, the New Republic has published 160 men and only 32 women, this in the categories of nonfiction, poetry, and book reviews. This shows that most publications would be well-served by re-examining the gender balance of their literary coverage.

We don’t believe these statistics reveal some sort of national conspiracy to keep women writers down. There’s no bald-headed arch villain sitting around in his underground library saying, "Hmmm, what shall I do to disenfranchise the ladies today?" The answers to our questions are more complicated than this and most likely have to do with what the critical establishment unconsciously values as "literary." Are certain subjects and styles considered inherently more "serious" and therefore more worthy of recognition than others? And why is it that more women haven’t been willing to enter into the critical conversation that often determines the way books are received by the literary establishment and reading public? Statistics aren’t in themselves an answer, but are instead an opportunity for those of us who love literature to open our minds to the possibility of other pleasures and ways of reading that we have yet to learn.

In the meantime, we will keep encouraging women to speak up about their experiences in the writing and publishing world. To paraphrase a male writer of whom we’re very fond, truth is, after all, beauty, and that’s all we need to know

Tags: franzenfreude, Jennifer Weiner, jodi picoult, Jonathan Franzen, women writers

—According to a recent post on Facebook by Sarah Palin, burning the Koran on 9/11 is as unethical as building a mosque at Ground Zero. [Gawker]

—Supermodel Naomi Campbell is coming to terms with her turbulent past. "I admit to my past. I own it. I don’t deny it. Denial is a very bad thing." [New York Times]

—Carly Fiorina, who is in the middle of battling Democrat Barbara Boxer for a Senate seat in California, made the rather curious choice of spending Labor Day Weekend in Israel. [The Daily Beast]

—In the aftermath of false-claims lawsuits against the makers of Botox, the FDA is thinking about approving it for use in the treatment of migraines.  Allergan, the company that makes the injectable, is also studying whether it can be used to treat overactive bladder condition. [New York Times]

—Britney Spears is being sued by one of her former bodyguards. He claims that the formerly troubled popstar repeatedly exposed herself to him and abused her children. [TMZ]

Photograph of Sarah Palin by Tricia Ward for Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: botox, Britney Spears, carly fiorina, koran, naomi campbell, Sarah Palin

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article about how Democratic female pols can market themselves in the face of the Mama Grizzly assualt, dinging New York Attorney General candidate Kathleen M. Rice in particular for a campaign video in which she all but declared herself tough in spite of her gender. Today, the New York Times profiles Rice in advance of Tuesday's Democratic primary, making it clear that her tougher-than-any-guy image wasn't just a costume she slipped on for that ad, that her aggressive pursuit of harsher sentencing for drunk drivers and fewer plea bargains is what's earned her a national reputation—but not an entirely positive one. She's not popular in the Nassau County legal community, it seems. In addition to citing criticism of her management style, the Times piece notes, " Some defense lawyers accuse her of being more concerned with headlines than with justice. They say her efforts to reduce plea deals have created case backlogs, and criticize her campaign to seek stiffer sentences for drunken driving as political posturing." There were whispers that it was her naked ambition that prevented her from being appointed to a U.S. attorney gig for which she was under consideration, and the most unflattering detail of all is that she "angered women’s groups when she told part-time female prosecutors that they should take on full-time roles if they wanted to continue in the office. Ms. Rice brushed aside the criticisms, saying she had a responsibility to taxpayers to get the most out of her prosecutors. (She later created a special bureau, charged with the initial assessment of new cases, which allowed flexible work hours for some prosecutors.)" And while Katrina Vanden Heuval, who endorsed Rice's opponent Eric Schneiderman in the Nation, recently tweeted, "Why would women support Rice for NY Atty General. Eric Schneiderman has most powerful record supporting womens' repro & civil right," Rice has been endorsed by Emily's List, Gloria Steinem, and NOW's N.Y. PAC.

So, of course, the question to ask is, would Rice's tough image as a prosecutor have received the same treatment from the Times were she a man? Sure. That particular office, NY AG, most recently occupied by Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer, isn't a place for pushovers, and there's been plenty of media coverage of both those men's managerial styles and ambition. Though perhaps that full-time vs. part-time detail might not have made the final edit—or maybe it wouldn't have happened. I hate saying it, but that reads like Rice had a particular ax to grind on that issue, that she wasn't willing to give other women any quarter since she'd made it to where she was by going to great pains to not ask for different treatment as a woman. And that's probably what makes her image problem all the more frustrating to Rice. Naked ambition and agression were what helped Spitzer and Cuomo get the same job those very qualities might prevent her from snagging.

Photograph of District Attorney Kathleen M. Rice courtesy of Nassau County, NY.

Tags: Eliot Spitzer, eric schneiderman, kathleen rice