How my Twitter plea for women writers opened the floodgates

An unscientific review of the pitches I receive suggests women are more uncertain about their qualification to comment

As comment editor, one of my first jobs when I start work at 7am is to secure a writer to respond to each of the main breaking news stories that day.

Their job as columnists is to provide context, colour, insight and analysis; to give us a new perspective on the issues we thought we already understood. Part of my job as an editor – if we want that perspective to reflect our readership – is to make sure we hear from as many women as men.

Achieving that gender balance is more difficult than it sounds. Although we have both male and female journalists on staff as columnists, we also commission comment from a wide range of other voices – students, activists, freelance writers, experts in other fields, citizens on the ground living through the stories we cover.