Aw, bless. Man problems.

Here's an intractable problem for you. The LRB has very few female contributors and it reviews too few books by women. A reader explains to them that she is letting her subscription lapse until this is rectified. Editor writes back. He would love to rectify the situation. But how? It's terribly complicated: "If you were interested, I’d be glad to discuss with you, perhaps in an email exchange, why it may be that women are underrepresented in the paper. I think they’re complicated; actually, as complicated as it gets." (They? Does he mean women are complicated? Or did he perchance think he had used the word "reasons" in his previous sentence?) It keeps him awake at night, but what can he possibly do: "despite the distress it causes us [...] the proportion of women in the paper remains so stubbornly low, the efforts we’ve made to change the situation have been hopelessly unsuccessful."

Poor chap. Can anyone advise him of a way out of this fearful hole?