President Obama has the chance to democratize the media with one key appointment in the next few weeks. The President is about to nominate the next Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, and he should pick a woman. Maybe there is no easy fix to getting women into the top jobs in the telecom and media industries, but the government watchdog can and should be headed by a woman.

There has never been a female chair of the Federal Communications Commission – the independent agency that oversees America’s telecommunications and media policy.

The FCC is supposed to represent the American public. Half the public are women. It’s long past the time to close the gender gap in our nation’s leadership and in the media and telecom industries' leadership, where only 28.4% of TV news directors were women in 2011, according to the Women's Media Center's 2012 Status of Women in the U.S. Media Report. And the post atop the FCC is one of the most important opportunities available to raise the bar for representational diversity and decision-making in the media and telecom sectors, which are the infrastructure of this generation and of the future.

Signed,

Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem

Founders, The Women's Media Center