The 50/50 voice goal — what we mean and what we don’t

Typical Female publishes equal numbers of female-voiced and male-voiced pieces each month. Visitors sometimes read this as a kind of pseudo-objectivity — we’ll show ‘both sides’ of women’s experience. That’s not what it is. The 50/50 goal exists because a magazine about stereotypes affects everyone, and the work is stronger when men read it and write for it. We don’t balance opinions inside the same essay; we publish committed essays from a wider range of voices than most magazines about gender do, and we let readers see the contrast across pieces. A male essay disagreeing with a female essay isn’t ‘the other side’ winning. It’s a magazine refusing to flatten itself.