The Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, acclaimed for his study of inkblots, might have enjoyed doing some field work at the most recent newsroom-wide meeting of The New York Times. Many in the audience saw before them top editors representing a bold new phase of digital innovation. Others, especially some women, saw a reality grounded firmly in the present: an all-male cast at the podium, the chief architects behind the most important strategic document since the celebrated innovation report in 2014. Was this a portrait of a newsroom’s future or of the gender that will remain in charge of it?

One or both may be correct. But the optics that day highlight a piercing problem at The Times. Women have skidded down the power structure since Jill Abramson was dismissed as executive editor three years ago, with fewer females leading big news departments and fewer coming up the pipeline. Thus, fewer women decide what big stories are assigned, what broad coverage priorities are set, and what a re-envisioned Times should look like.

Just how grave the problem is depends, as with inkblots, on one’s perspective.

In recent weeks, for example, three women were added to the masthead, placing them in the coveted ranks of the newsroom’s top editors. In addition, women head up the Washington bureau, the arts and culture coverage, the book, photo and video desks, as well as several smaller sections. There are probably more distinguished women in this newsroom than at most any newspaper in the country.

So where’s the grievance? For one, men are No. 1 and No. 2 in command for the first time in 14 years, Dean Baquet as executive editor and Joseph Kahn as the recently named managing editor. Another male is first among equals driving coverage in the ranks below them, while men run the paper’s national news, foreign news and metropolitan news, as well as both business and sports. The next editing tier is also heavily male, a climate that led one group of women to wryly fantasize one day about how differently a story might read if no man touched it throughout the editing chain.