Something Crikey Editor Jonathan Green asked this morning on Twitter got me thinking. He asked:
serious question: why don’t women (proportionally the unbalance is weird) subscribe to crikey?
We see the same things with political blogs in Australia – the ratio of male to female comments here ranges between about 4 to 1 on a good day, through to 10 to 1 depending on the topic.
Pollbludger is similar.
Over at Catallaxy it’s nearly all male, Tallyroom is nearly all male – the only place on the Australian political net where the gender balance seems to be a little more equal is with some threads at Larvatus Prodeo.
So the big question is “Why?”
With your standard IP address not having a gender identification component, it’s impossible to tell if the skewed comment ratio is reflective of the broader readership, or whether females are just more likely to lurk rather than comment? Although, with Crikey having the same imbalance with their subs, it’s probably not the latter.
Something that has surprised me for a while on the gender balance of the Australian political net is the lack of big female political bloggers. We have Kim and Anna over at LP as a group blog, while Tigtog and Lauredhel at Hoyden touch on politics occasionally and do it well – but where are the dedicated Australian political bloggers of the likes of Wonkette or Pandagon that we see in the US?
Let’s do our bit to find them. Know any female political bloggers in Australia? If so, drop a link in comments and we’ll list them here – big or small, old or new – and hopefully give them some exposure. If you’re an Australian female political blogger, don’t be shy – tell us about your blog. I for one would like to see far more female political voices in Australia’s new media.
The place is getting a little too blokey.
UPDATE
Larvatus Prodeo has a related thread going, as has Hoyden. Fuck Politeness has joined the fray, as has Memes of Production. Anti Social Butterfly has also joined the debate in a rather unique way.
UPDATE 2:
Having just experienced a rather large lesson in the art of political definition over at Hoydens, and how different political subcultures and communities give far different political meanings and nuance to words like “politics”, to better explain what I was trying to get at with the original question and title of the post, let me rephrase the last part of the above question in a way that I hope will clarify what I mean to a wider audience that seems to be dropping by.
What I was effectively asking was “Where are the dedicated Australian political bloggers of the likes of Wonkette or Pandagon that we see in the US? Where is the Oz female blogging equivalent of Laura Tingle? Or Lenore Taylor? Or Adele Ferguson?
There are plenty of Oz female bloggers that exist across every other part of the political spectrum, but the absence of that core mainstream political angle in the Australian blogosphere seems to be an almost uniquely Australian experience.
The list of Australian female political bloggers – as they come in, we’ll put them here:
115 Comments
The Internet has always appeared to have a male gender bias Poss. While I don’t believe that to be true in terms of overall usage, I do think that many female ‘net users move in specific online communities that are not as prominent to the rest of the population. Social media reinforces this, as seen by the way Facebook’s user numbers are skewing more and more female.
As for political blogging, lets use political participation as a yard-stick. There is certainly an entrenched male bias in politics, so it doesn’t surprise me that it is somewhat replicated in the community that takes an interest in it.
I agree that more female voices online would be a good thing, but there is still the ‘shrill vs confident’ gender problem to overcome. Until online discussion as a whole becomes a bit more civil I think we’ll continue to see women ignore the rabble.
Poss, I don’t want to preempt what will no doubt be a long list of female political bloggers, but is it possible that snark culture in big-p Political blogs might be off-putting for some women? Let me be clear, I don’t mind a bit of snark myself, but is it possible that it’s a macho mode of speech and interaction that a lot of women can’t be bothered with?
Also, feminists might ask you to clarify what you mean by politics – and that’s to say that a lot of women might consider themselves to be addressing political concerns/issues even if they’re not talking about the circus down in Canberra very often.
Anyway, good post – look forward to seeing how it pans out.
Well, I’m a woman, a blogger and a regular shouter about politics. http://www.kingstribune.com/ (blogged today in response to this article) and I don’t think you’re going to get a simple answer to this question.
It’s to do with lack of time, and how women choose to spend the free time they have. If I’m going to spend 10 minutes wandering around the internet, will I spend it reading Crikey or will I head to Facebook and find out what people I know are doing? I’m going to use my time effectively and, unfortunately, most people (male and female) don’t believe they can do anything effective in politics. Political manoeuvring is too distant, too silly and so utterly pointless, most women I know prefer to work with something they can have some impact on.
Also, I’m far less likely to get involved in a debate about who is winning something than I am about why they are winning it. Male commentary seems to focus more on the competitive angle than the analysis of motivation. This is not a criticism or a put-down, merely an observation on why i think women find political debate less engaging.
Having said all that, I love Crikey, read it regularly and am so relieved to find some genuine journalism amongst the spectacular decline of all our dailies.
“Also, feminists might ask you to clarify what you mean by politics – and that’s to say that a lot of women might consider themselves to be addressing political concerns/issues even if they’re not talking about the circus down in Canberra very often.”
…and more importantly they may actually be addressing politics even though it doesn’t look like it to those with a more narrow definition.
It may also be the case that there are some women blogging with gender-neutral or male names and it’s just assumed they’re male.
But I’d mostly just want people to consider that rather than suggesting that women are a particular way that means they don’t get into political blogging, perhaps it’s more the case that they are socialised to be a particular way. It’s a fine distinction, of course, but important to note if we’re going to get more women involved in political blogging and politics in general. There are quite a few women in politics now who are proof that it isn’t in women’s genetic make-up to shy away from the rough and tumble of politics, and at the same time there are quite a few men who do shy away from it. So let’s try and stay away from essentialist explanations.
i’m with jason – i always considered most of my LJ to be ‘political’: in the ‘personal is political’ way; when i was talking about my honours thesis on sexuality; when i wrote about my own or others’ activism; and when i occasionally discussed stuff that was in the (mainstream) news of the day/related to the “circus down in canberra”. of course there is overlap between all these aspects of ‘politics’.
in my reading, hoyden about town is almost always political! (i’m not sure about the lolcats though.)
also, dave: the internet may appear to have a male gender bias to male users; online communities that are more female dominated are prominent to a fairly significant (over 50%!) part of the population. Your comment assumes that the male experience is the normative and dominant one, and of course if this is true, then the internet and political blogs etc etc will be male-dominated. I suspect this is not objectively true (though I don’t know how you’d measure that).
on the other hand, i think it’s true that there are plenty of obstacles to women participating in “traditional” or maybe “mainstream” politics, and dave is right that part of that is an entrenched bias. and there’s also the blokeyness of it that Jason points out – not just the snark, but the kind of one-up-manship of knowing lots of stats, throwing your weight around, etc. that’s that I find off-putting.
wow. i haven’t felt moved to comment on a blog post for ages. interesting
don’t know if this is confined just to australian, but lists 500 women political bloggers.
there’s also hexpletive.
@Anna – right – I wasn’t meaning in the least to cast doubt on the idea that this actually *is* addressing politics – just an awkward turn of phrase.
Also, I wasn’t trying to essentialise, just to relate an attitude towards snarky comment culture I’ve heard expressed by more than one female blogger – I tried to qualify all my suggestions.
Of course Jason – I didn’t mean you when I wrote that. I was clarifying for others who maybe don’t understand the difference (not that I’m suggesting that there may occasionally be a lack of nuance on the internet!)
But as someone who likes the traditional variety of political blogging, and who doesn’t shy away from a good stoush, I think it’s important not to put it all down to “women just don’t like that shit”.
Possum, that list of blogs above is pretty narrow in terms of ‘political blogs’. Actually, I would classify yours, mine, and Pollbludger as a subcategory as psephological blogs, even if we occasionally stray away from strict election blogging. In my experience, I have a lot of female friends interested in politics, but the people who are particularly interested in psephology and elections outside a specific policy context are almost all male.
Contrast how our blogs spend all our time on elections with Larvatus Prodeo, where most discussion of elections is in a policy context or because of an upcoming election, while the blog is more broadly political. My experience offline is the interest in elections for elections sake, as a kind of sport (although that’s not to say that the people interested in it don’t care about policy outcomes, etc), is very male-dominated. Probably 100% male-dominated amongst people I know. So it’s not surprising that those sorts of blogs are male-dominated.
But if you broaden the net to more blogs talking about politics, the gender imbalance is much less stark, although it’s probably a majority who are male.
I write a blog that is exclusively about Australian Politics. Oddly though, well over half of my readers/followers/commenters are female. It should be pointed out that the blog is satirical in nature. I don’t know if the lack of seriousness plays a part in that.
Here’s a female political blogger: http://tellmeyourpolitik.wordpress.com/
She also is one of the bloggers at http://publicpolity.wordpress.com/
Now that I think about it, it’s not so much better when you get away from the strict psephological arena.
Poss – I think it is partly time constraints. Working life, family life, keeping relationships in tact, etc. take a fair amount of time.
Many women are also heavily involved in voluntary work with different community or women’s organisations – especially after retirement. It doesn’t mean that they are not politically aware or interested but blogging means you need to have the time to sit at the computer frequently. I can only do that when I am working on some volunteer work at home.
Personally, I love reading political comment and ideas which become discussion points with OH and friends who don’t want to bother to read anything on a computer (retirement age, of course). I thank my lucky stars for sites like yours, PB, LP, Piping Shrike, Political Sword, New Matilda, and many others. The observations and comment offsets the mindlessly ‘follow the leader’ comments of the MSM.
I have been a contributor to crikey for a number of years and I look forward to it everyday no matter whether I agree with the comment or not.
My daughter and daughtersinlaw just do not have any time in their busy working/home lives to indulge in the way I do. But they are very, very politically astute.
@Anna – then we agree! Great.
There appears to be many politically astute and well informed women (as above) around, most of us reading Crikey through other’s subscriptions (sorry)? So is the problem not that women are not reading about politics, it’s that they’re not writing about it?
Reasons: Blokey environment? Women being less assertive and therefore less likely to throw their opinion out to strangers and expect it to matter? Lack of time and convenient space fro discussion?
Crikey, is this something that someone with the space and resources can address? Could YOU create a female-focused political blog and encourage women to join political debate? Seems to me you’d be the perfect venue for it. I’d be there with all my bells and right wing opinions on!
Maybe Double X could be a model that could be of interest to Crikey.
http://www.doublex.com
Some good points made above by several persons including Anna, Jason, daiskmeliadorn
just to name a few.
My wife [pardon the possessive] is extremely active politically, as are the couple of hundred women that she communicates with on a regular basis about a whole series of topics and issues most days.
Most of these issues receive minimal if any attention from media and politicians, it was noteworthy that several major issues that have direct ramifications for women were pointedly ignored during the last election by all parties and just about invisible in the media.
When these issues [and I'm trying not use the confining and narrow phrase 'women's issues'] do poke their noses up in the public arena the mass of ignorance and what is euphemistically called ‘snark’ is incredible in its mind blowing vaccuuous.
I have seen discussion at a couple of women’s political blogs as to whether it was actually worth the effort to go over to LP and engage in what was seen [rightly in my opinion] as generally pointless argy bargy point scoring based mainly on ignorance and a limited world view.
A lot of political energy goes into combating myths and fallacies at the points where they originate and/or are promulagated.
Why bother to enter into a pointless slangfest on a blog site, like this one or any other of the many I frequent, when aggression and ignorance is all too common?
Having to constantly re-invent the political wheel in discussions is boring and timewasting.
I have seen on women’s political blogs reference to males playing ‘bingo’, that is resorting to tiresome myths and oneliners that go nowhere, covering some or all the usual snarky comebacks, ‘get a life/ you’re ugly/no sense of humour’.
Its boring, most, actually all of the hundreds of politically aware and active women I know, are too busy at actually doing politics to worry about such mindless trivia.
If the so-called political blogs want to include women more they need to lift their eyes and widen their concept of what constitutes politics.
Not having a go at this site specifically or even you Possum, but there is in fact a very lively political conversation going on between women in Oz, its just that most males are not aware of it.
I don’t agree that a Double X style “women’s blog” would be in any way a useful response to the lack of women participating in the blogs we have now.
Women are blogging about politics in very high numbers now, it’s just that they are being ignored or not counted as “political”. A new women’s blog won’t stop that, it will only help reinforce the reasons many women don’t feel welcome in the more male-dominated commenting spaces if a new space is created just for them; and I doubt it will bring in any of the blokes who’ve been ignoring the huge number of female bloggers who already exist.
My feeling is that the number one reason women either stay away from the hard politics blogs or don’t identify as women on them is the sexism that they frequently encounter, whether from unfair and irrelevant comments about their appearance, their “shrill” and “angry” tone, and the dismissal of women’s experience, to the more apparently benign but still as frustrating sense that women are “above” that sort of thing that makes them feel judged as being unwomanly if they appear to enjoy it.
The women aren’t missing from the political blogosphere. If there are men here who are noticing their absence from wherever you are, then perhaps the more relevant question is why they are avoiding you and the places you go.
OK, as a woman reader, I just checked out the blogs on your mini blog roll.
Jane. I don’t need all that anger. How do you live with it?
daiskmeliadorn. I’d add you as a friend on LJ, but I’ll probably forget who you are by next time you post. Thought I was slack.
Hexepletive. I had to barge my way through the uni’s filter to get to your site, but have taken a RSS feed. Going to check out your articles on Feministe later. Love the pouch.
BNE. No facility on your site to grab a feed? There is a widget for RSS feeds in WordPress.
As for comments. It can be tough, especially on sites like PB. The first time I commented I had to go away and lick my wounds for a while before I ventured back. But there are lots of good comments on PB, including from female participants, and you learn to skip the garbage.
This is really curious, worthy of some in-depth research.
On the specific topic of psephology it’s certainly my observation as well that, for some reason, it seems to be almost exclusively men who are interested. Whilst I know more women, online and offline, with much deeper interests in politics, and particularly policy issues, than men, the only people I know who seem to have any real interest in ‘electoral nerdery’, and understanding how voters behave, are all men. Why should this be so?
Maybe psephological nerds share a defective gene that’s only carried on the Y chromosome?
Anna Winter,
‘Tis not our fault!
Mind you, I suppose after a couple of twisted ankles & smashed elbows, courtesy of slipping in one of the pools of discarded testosterone & warpaint lying about the blogosphere, some might consider taking their attention elsewhere…
Hi Possum,
May I suggest you use the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women’ instead of ‘female’ and ‘females’? The latter is awkward and overly scientific to say the least – i.e. “according to my observations, the female of the species does not engage in much political blogging”.
It also places the emphasis on gender in a way that men become the default. Compare the following:
“I can’t think of many political blogs written by women.”
“I can’t think of many female political bloggers.”
It’s like when people say “male nurse”. The assumption is that nurses are/should be women. Hence, referring to ‘female’ political bloggers is setting it up to look like political bloggers are/should be men by definition.
Anna went:
What’s interesting with that, is that both here and Pollbludger that stuff either doesn’t exist at all in comments or gets idiotbinned ASAP when it does pop up. So even though it’s true and can be seen readily at particular places, even where that doesn’t occur, or at least at a far reduced level, the result in terms of gender balance remains the same.
Having just had a squiz through the archives, what’s also worth mentioning is that during the election campaign in 2007, especially the last week, the ratio of male to female comments changed fairly dramatically here (or rather at the old wordpress blog), in some threads reaching parity.
Polyquats,
Just wondering, was the licking of wounds because of outright sexism or just the general argy bargy that is given to all and sundry?
Justin – sorry, habit! It’s pretty funny when you put it like that.
I’ve always had delusions of David Attenborough grandeur.
Justin – I always see it the other way. “Woman blogger” is just ugly language, just like “man blogger” would be. Or “man nurse”.
Pollbludger is a pretty terrible blog for new people, or even experienced people who only want to dip into the conversation briefly, to engage with, at least in the comments (the posts themselves are great). It’s a small group of people who comment a LOT. I usually only comment on a specific thread on a narrow issue where the comment numbers are manageable.
I don’t know what a ‘hard politics’ blog is, but none of the blogs I’m thinking of can be fairly characterised that way. I’ve never even seen anything like that here or on my blog. Maybe some of that is on Pollbludger, but Pollbludger’s comments threads have much bigger problems for new people than that.
Hi ya Possum -
re bloggers- Catrina at Politics101 by far produces the most blogs there. The rest of us have the odd go but she takes most of the responsibility for it. My own experience has been that being in the minoroty can be fun at times, but can also make one an obvious target. I haven’t found overt sexism (apart from one creepy cyberstalker -type bvt I was well protected by the other bloggers). Personally I found rather that some of the more attacking stuff can be hard to take, and I wonder whether for lurking women that could be offputting. I know it took me a long time to get the courage to hit the Submit button when I first started reading PollBludger but for the most part it was a hoot (till sadly, there was a parting of the ways for some of us – no need to reahash all that though..) . Some of my hesitation was that my interest in politcs is issue-focused rather than statistical analysis and that was the main focus of most of the blogs I came across so I just felt too ignorant to participate. However I learnt a bit along the way and for the most part my lack of knowledge was tolerated and I got lots of helpful explanations whenever i asked.
So, glad your blog is going so well. Still can’t read the graphs though
Cheers, Jen
Possum, just a few thoughts.
Most posters use pen names, and net addresses do not reveal the sex of the poster.
Many posters do not reveal their sex when posting.
Many home internet accounts, especially amongst the older community, are opened in the husband’s/male partners name.
My assumption is that a significant proportion of political posters are over 50.
Could it be therefore that in many cases what you assume is a male poster from the male name of the account owner, is in fact a woman?
I know this would not likely disprove that most posters are male, but surely it would affect the percentages?
For those following through the comments RSS, Larvatus Prodeo has a related thread going, as has Hoyden.
I just don’t even bother reading the comments threads on PB unless it’s one of the more specialist topic threads that gets less comments. Just too many comments to keep up with – by the time I decide I want to post something, there’s another 10 comments to read – so about two years ago I just decided not to bother and just stick to reading the posts. I can’t believe that some of the regular commenters actually hold down day jobs and have lives away from their computers!
OOps – meant “most posts” not “most blogs”…. whatever
Possum: apparently Margo Kingston’s webdiary is still going – there is a link from someone at PB today (can’t be bothered scrolling thru 100s of comments to find it tho).
Re-commenting a brilliant suggestion from Anna at Hoyden About Town that there’s a whole down under feminist carnival you could check out, for starters…
poss- Pimpin for Freedom is a boy blogger
Is it Jen?
The person who sent me that email is now officially in trouble!
Actually, it seems not – female blogger it is then.
Poss, It was argy bargy that was a bit personal and OTT. Around election time, when passions were a bit heated.
re 34
” I am a young libertarian Aussie male.” in the About Me bit.
sorry if I got it wrong but that’s why
Apparently it’s a joke Jen. The author over on the LP comments thread said so anyway – who am I to argue!
How are the numbers on housework by gender going? Are we near parity yet?
Since blogging is something people mostly do in their spare time, that could have something to do with it.
Also, the community thing that makes some blogs hum can be off putting. Commenting sometimes feels like butting in.
When the majority of that community are men, or seem to be men, it’s a bit like trying to get into conversation with blokes standing around a barbecue. They might humour you, but they’re never going to let you turn the sausages.
Not a day goes past without my blogs/comments appearing in Crikey. Ditto Huff Post, New York Times, Times on Line, Washington Post, et al. Politics happens to be the only subject-well almost the only subject I rabbit on about, with the exception of First Dog who is political anyway.
I’m not terribly conversant with graphs. But if you doubt my input please look at Guy Rundle’s article ‘Inglorious Basterd Scheungraber Captured. Hooray?’ Wed 12 Aug 09.
You may not care for my comments, but no one has ever doubted my sexuality! Olé.
NICK CASMIRRI How dare you sir! Psephology for me is right up there with sex, sin and sapphires.
Very poorly in my household, as I’m so often and deservingly reminded!
#41
I’m well aware that there are plenty of women out there with an interest in psephology, but it is a simple general observation that there does seem to be relatively few compared with men. In my specific personal observation I was referring to people I know personally, and sure, I’m from the country, so I get to meet less people, but it is still strange.
was i Just censored by crikey???Geez….
(No, you were deleted by me because your post was idiotic – Poss)
Dear Poss: Someone suggested-I know who but don’t wish to be offensive-that you/Crikey create a female-focused political blog. I would deem this to be a retrograde step because I’ve never felt comfortable with the idea that women, as a group, deserve a special niche to themselves. In a previous incarnation, as a photographer, I wouldn’t engage in a group showing of ‘female’ photographers’; but was more than happy to be included in a group of photographers. (As well as my own solo exhibitions)
This whole ethos of imagining that because women are a different sex to men they should be cossetted by making a special group is, I believe, shameless ‘lookatmeI’mawomanandaren’tIclever-ism’. It tends to end up with editors appearing to be bending over backwards to be politically correct. The gesture of allowing this becomes, in my opinion, an exercise in tokenism. Perhaps it was not intended to be so but never-the-less it is so. Also it furthers the idea that women have special insights and it re-enforces the idea of separateness.
We all, irrespective of our sex, have a ‘unique’ insight and if it’s a valid and/or interesting insight it will be a fine piece of commentary as it stands, not because it was, or was not written by a woman.
Here I am not suggesting that men should be confined to not writing about the problems of being a housewife, or that women should be confined to not writing about male midlife paranormal behaviour per se. However, frequently this is the result. with the unhappy result of an article or book or movie looking like tokenism.
In the area of movies women have become writers, producers, directors, photographers without demanding special attention because of their sex. Why not in political commentary? As for the suggestion that women have too many tasks as it is without tackling politics, horseshit! If something is needed badly enough, it’s do-able. Look at Julia Gillard!
If any woman reading this should feel I’m anti-women they would have to have rocks in their heads. Men have, throughout history competed against each other. Why should women eschew playing by the same rules?
I agree Venise A – I don’t want a special girlie-blog site, I am equally ok with the idea that women will disagree with each other as much as they will with men. I suspect it is the manner in which that happens thatmay differ at times. While most of my male blogging friends are delightfully polite and extremely entertaining, I have also encountered some extremely umpleasant ones, and that has not been the case with women (although statistically they are in way way fewer numbers).
It’s because of bullying, plain and simple.
agreed marktwain.
Ms Twain, I was hoping you’d pop by!
On the comments side of things, any chance you could expand on that?
Rephrasing what I asked over at LP, we have Laura Tingle, Michelle Grattan, Lenore Taylor, Karen Middleton, Ashleigh Gillon, Annabel Crabb, Adele Ferguson, Janet Albrechtsen, Caroline Overington, etc as well as a bucketful more men in major media publications that focus on the legislative and ultimately electoral side of politics. Yet in the Australian political blogosphere we seem to get a much smaller ratio of female bloggers that look at the same tight set of issues. Any thoughts on why – on the actual blogging side of things – that’s the case?
Way back yonder Ben went:
What’s interesting on the stats side of this where the blog becomes a bit gritty, is that the reader and regular commenter I couldn’t do without here when it comes to grinding through and tweaking some new methodology, is female – Caf
Yet, I’ve experienced the same thing as you have on the pure psephology side – nearly all male.
But on the Pollster side, it starts to get a bit different – same with the stats side with the ABS and university depts.
Hello there! One of Australia’s first female bloggers here.
A potted history of my blog life:
Started as Victoria Cross of the 21st Century on Blogger about 2003. Didn’t get much feedback as I was but one of many thousands of blogs that started worldwide every day, so I migrated over to Margo Kingston’s WebDiary in 2004 when I noticed it on the smh website, and just left it up to her to moderate, write the blogs and herd the cats and just bought into the political debate as a regular contributor. This was about the time of the ‘Not Happy, John’ book and camapign before the 2004 federal election and all I wanted to do was get rid of Howard and replace him with Latham(well, anyone actually, and, in the end probably better that it wasn’t Mad Mark).
Once Margot became ill, and having suffered extensive villification from the Coalition and their supporters because of her campaign with John Valder, she shut down the blog.
Around about the same time the ineffably fantastic Matt Price started his open political blog on The Oz’s newish website. A lot of the regulars from Margot’s blog went over there until he sadly passed away. He has since been replaced by Jack the Insider and I am one of his regular blog contributors there, as opposed to anywhere else because he’s fair and reasonable, an intelligent commentator on politics and sport, and engages with his audience. There’s also a fair number of women, other than myself, that contribute.
However, during this period I also became the only female blog originator on the Labor First site, which had been set up as a favour to the ALP by Evan Thornley.
As I’ve always been highly opinionated about my politics and believed that it was my duty to use the new bully pulpit of the internet to get out there and, in the tradition of the old Domain soapbox speakers at Speakers Corner, attempt to sway the listening public to my cause, I set about my task with enthusiasm.
A link to one of my blogs from 2006 is below(just to prove my bona fides and to give a taste of my work to the poor souls who never got the chance to read me, lol):
http://bloggers.laborfirst.com.au/bloggers/blog.asp?archive=m2006028154
Sadly, I had to finish up at Labor First when whoever it was that was maintaining the technical side of the blog(for free) had to give it away and Evan Thornley then converted the site into a simple Bulletin Board and News aggregator, which comes out in a daily e-mail format, still, to this day.
I owe my start in political blogging to all the above-mentioned trailblazers, and to Crikey’s own, former, Politics writer, the heroic Christian Kerr, who I audaciously began a correspondence with when he was at Crikey as Hillary Bray. His encouragement of me in my blogging endeavours spurred me on to my own little trail to blaze away at!
It’s true that women need to multitask in order to find the time to blog and bring up a family. I just taught myself to type faster and think on my feet. Also, the fact that I am a home-based Carer has helped my time management immensely.
One thing’s for sure, you have to have thick skin to be a regular political blogger. I have endured more insults and, basically, cyber-bullying from my time in the world of internet political blogging than I ever have in the whole rest of my life! It is definitely not for the faint-hearted! People, from the anonymity of the ‘net, feel unencumbered when it comes to trying to take you apart in order to devalue your opinion. I’ve even had someone attempt to hack into my computer(probably some arch-conservative who thought that, only being a female, I wouldn’t have the best protection and firewall around me, lol), in order to shut me out from the ongoing debate and intimidate me into submission(this is The Australian political blogs, after all!).
Which brings me to today, and my little missive to you, to let you know that we women ARE out there.
Finally, as with any committed blogger, I am offering my services to Crikey if they should ever decide they want a specifically female perspective on politics in their blog roll, as I never shut up about politics and always have a point of view!
Cheers!
Well, Victoria, ain’t you a treat. More power to you. Poss, constraints on blogging or posting do have to do with other demands on time. I have no problem with snark or stoush if I have the time to do the research… well, probably I’d go the snark anyway.
Just one thing, Victoria, I’m not at all sure about Jack baby. Have had a consistent look at what he writes and his responses to his consistent posters. I have a pretty consistent desire to smack his lights out for thinly veiled condescension.
Possum’s flailing about on female vs. women I take at face value given his starting point = clinical demographic descriptor. Frankly, I’ve no idea why people get so peculiar about this. If I’m writing a report for the coroner, I’ll use terminologly such as male or female to describe gender of the person who is an ex-parrot.
I think marktwain’s comment is pertinent.
Bullying is intimidation, and it is not the same as ‘stoushing’ – although it can be disguised as this and written off as snark. However when you are on the receiving end of it, as opposed to sniping, arguing, disagreeing or just being plain obnoxious it feels very different.
Judging by comments made by some women posters on P101 it has been a deterrent for some.
Something interesting on this:
http://thememesofproduction.org/articles/why-are-women-not-blogging-politics
Snapper, I’m shocked!
Poss, yeeeah. Don’t like his stuff on the whole. Populist crap mostly. Don’t know how George M shares a cubicle with him.
It’s again a discussion about inclusion and exclusion and who sets the rules for same, for any given identifiable group.
Why aren’t there more female political bloggers? Because women have better things to do than piss in the wind on the intermenet.
Why aren’t there more women posting on political blogs? Because some men get their knickers in a knot during debates, turn into weirdos when under the cloak of anonymity and for some reason decide to get really, really nasty. This is not behaviour these men would ever contemplate in normal life and I doubt many are aware of the hair suddenly sprouting from their palms or the genitalia from their foreheads.
Why don’t more women subscribe to Crikey? Because a lot of it is tripe – excepting First Dog, Rundle (when not drunk) and Trevor the Magnificent from Lowbottom High, all of whom are very talented and I’m sure very sexy men – and because it mainly consists of blather, putting forward one person’s opinion on a matter without taking into consideration other people’s points of view. That’s just boring and why we invented journalism in the first place.
There may be reasonable gender parity in political journalism and something approaching parity in politics itself, but when it comes to blogging, the resemblance to the shower room after a teenage boys’ footy match is both striking and a little icky.
What Mark Twain said mostly, though I personally get a lot of information/analysis from Possum, Pollbludger, Larvatus Prodeo, Political Sword and The Shrike. Surely, if you thought you had something to contribute you would, and if not, you’d keep your mouth shut?
Harry, it’s being told to keep your mouth shut because you are female that is the problem. That does not happen in real life but happens far too often online.
Which is probably why you and I post under a male pseudonym despite our gonads.
What’s interesting with this is that I get between 10 and 30 emails a day over what’s been posted on the blog – often leading to the bizarre situation of having more emails than comments for a given thread. Yet it’s something that’s been going on the same way for 2 years now.
But what’s most noteworthy is that the ratio of male to female email correspondence is around 2 to 1, rather than the 4 to 1 that happens here in comments on a good day or out to 10 to 1 that happens at other times.
What Ms Twain has said here has been repeated by others at LP and Hoyden as well on this, yet even on this blog where everyone is generally really well behaved and when they’re not they’re deleted, the same preference for non-public correspondence from female readers comes to fore.
Probably for the exact reasons Ms Twain and Jen have highlighted (and for those wondering why I call Mark Twain “Ms Twain”, it’s a long thing that goes back to the 2007 election. It’s not, as someone has said, a typical piece of male blogging condescension!… fair dinkum!)
What’s the real pity, is that the content of the mail correspondence is usually in the ripsnorter category and its really unfortunate that the state of political blogging in Australia means that people aren’t comfortable sharing it publically.
I trust that people are talking from a place of experience and better understanding than me when they say that women shy away from commenting because of a hostile and sexist online culture. I just don’t understand how that applies to those blogs which have a high level of civility, like my own and this one.
I wonder what else is responsible? And I don’t really buy the argument about ‘women don’t have any time either’. Again, my experience of offline politics is that women are just as equally represented in those areas, whether amongst paid people involved in politics or volunteers. That may be my narrow experience of progressive politics, and I don’t doubt that gender parity is much worse in the major parties, but it strikes me as an odd argument. Also if we’re talking about commenters, it isn’t a massive time commitment like it is to run your own blog.
I still come back to that, for whatever reason, psephological purists are vastly dominated by men. That doesn’t mean the broader political sphere is, but by looking at Possum’s blog it’s not a representative sample of the blogosphere.
Then again, no-one has really revealed any super-active gems of blogs run by women in this conversaton, most I already know or are relatively low-burn blogs. Which suggests there is a genuine paucity of women in the political blogosphere, even in a broad definition. Hmm. Which wasn’t my original assessment (basically that they are there, just not where we are looking).
There is a potential solution to your correspondence problem, Poss. A lot of people email me with comments on stories I’ve written or published and many are very wary about having their letters printed with their names attached. In print, the policy is to only publish a letter with the author’s name withheld if there are very strong reasons for doing so, sometimes legal but most often for the sake of privacy or delicacy.
Generally, if you don’t put your name to it you don’t get to speak in the print media, which has both good and bad effects that I won’t get into here.
Online, however, those rules don’t apply. Perhaps you could set up an anonymous account through which you can publish the email under an anonymous label and thereby protect your correspondent from the vitriol that is so common in blogs, even your delightfully civil and female-friendly one? Worth a try.
“Where are Australia’s female political bloggers?”
What about me?
clarencegirl over at group blog North Coast Voices http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com
Good stuff Harry and Mark- and yes, using an obviously female name (especially my own- dumb move!) has attracted way more vitriol at me than the boys seemed to cop. Although – again, only a few out of vast majority who behaved as one would expect. However even one can be unnerving and unpleasant. So it’s good to find a site where that is not tolerated and the culture does not encourage it, whilst vigorous debate still occurs on some issues and people from different sides of the political spectrum blog rather than all being of the same colour -gets v. boring.
Does anyone have any figures on the proportion of blog posts in general which are written by men and women? I’d be willing to bet that blogging and responding to blogs is disproportionately a male hobby.
The relatively low number of female political journalists seems a bigger shortcoming to me – the major newspapers and TV stations attract a far greater audience than any Australian blog does, and the seeming male domination of political coverage may contribute to nonsense such as Tony Abbot being taken seriously as a future leader of the Liberal Party.
Re Crikey, I’m not surprised that it’s got low female readership: most of its writers are men and the daily email has a very blokey slant on things.
Possum – just posted some thoughts on your meanderings over on Politic 101.
http://politic.osm.net/2009/08/conspiracy/comment-page-3/#comment-38915
/Cat.
Two points others have touched on that I’d like to add to, but which I think apply to plenty of men as well as women, and I refer to my own experiences.
Firstly, I think it’s definitely the case that for a new reader of a blog with an obviously active ‘community’ of commenters posting a comment does feel like they’re ‘butting in’.
Secondly, the impersonal nature of many of these political blogs and their comments threads doesn’t really encourage a lot of people to join the conversation. There are those who feel quite at home with the impersonal and relatively anonymous nature of such online communities, but for plenty of others, including plenty of men like me, it just doesn’t grab us. We’re happy to read blogs and even read the comments to see what others are saying, but we don’t see the value in joining a discussion with miscellaneous blogger/commenter, we want to know who we’re talking to and feel some sort of connection with them. For me there’s definitely a link between where I’ve been most motivated to join the conversation and gaining some sense of who the blogger is as a real person.
(It just occurs to me that it could start to sound a little creepy either way – lurking or commenting)
And just one other aside. Social media and the relatively high rate of activity by female users of sites like Facebook was mentioned earlier. From a quick random sample of my Facebook friends I observe some interesting differences between the sort of things my male and female friends post. My female friends seem far more likely to post mundane (and sorry, but I’d have to say, generally more frivolous) comments about their lives, whilst my male friends seem far more likely to post opinions, details of their lives that are of more broad interest, and more abstract comments such as quotes or apparently random thoughts. I feel compelled to observe that my male friends seem to post more thoughtful material than my female friends. Now, that’s just a general observation, and I don’t want to speculate on why this may be – others may have different experiences.
I call and smell a big fat stinking bullshit. There are so many female Australian political bloggers out there this article would be laughable if it wasn’t serious.
Here’s a hint. I’m one of them. And I study political journalism.
And your blog is what Aileen? I’ll add it to the list.
Thanks Cat
Poss – let me introduce you to Aileen …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Wuornos
Just had to google ‘psephology’ to find out what youse were all on about…
I was interested by Nick’s comments (#67) about his friends on Facebook – your perceptions of what is/is not ‘interesting’ are – interesting! I wonder if likewise your female friends find your ‘broad interest’ postings less interesting than their own ‘frivolous’ ones…that sounds snarky, I don’t mean it quite that way, just that women tend to connect with each other on a more personal level than men.
And the snark factor mentioned in many comments is also of interest. Personally I avoid confrontation like the plague and am frequently AMAZED by the level of vitriol expressed in comments on all sorts of sites (even YouTube). My Mum once told me never to put anything in writing that I wouldn’t be happy to see on the front page of The Canberra Times. I often think of her advice when writing for web, email and print alike – and so should youse all! Putting your (constructive) opinions out there for criticism is confronting; I’ve noticed that men (in general) are better at handling criticism than women – they seem to take it less personally; get less upset. Or maybe they enjoy the ‘battle’ more.
Having said that, I think women are just as capable of being vitriolic as men; I wonder if the impersonal nature of the web would in fact make it easier for women to feel comfortable commenting? Especially if you can pretend you are a man!! (Or a dog).
It’s probably irrational, but I do tend to choose gender-neutral ‘names’ on the internet, or at least not my full name. I don’t want to be ‘found’ (I might be invited to a school reunion! Yikes!); I would rather that someone attempting to find everything I’ve ever written on the web couldn’t do so easily and trace it back to me, and where I live. I know that responsible bloggers are up-front about who they are – and so it should be. So far I’m too chicken. This may be related to the whole tedious personal safety thing women are brought up with, or the ‘avoiding confrontation’ thing.
In some ways I think ideas and opinions should be able to stand alone from the gender, race, religion etc of their owner. On the other hand, how can others assess them without knowing more about the owner’s ‘worldview’? (Me: female, white, middle-class, athiest). But too often the idea is ignored because someone takes offence at the person. How tedious is it listening to the Government and Opposition endlessly criticising ideas simply because they were made by the other side?
Oh dear, that was very long. Sorry.
Fuck Politeness has joined the fray.
The thread at Hoyden is very good and worth another mention.
#73
I have no doubt that said female friends have a very different view of what they find interesting. That’s the point, it is a bizarre pattern.
Nick …
In clinical testing, First Response® detected the hormone levels in 69% of women 4 days before their expected period, in 83% of women 3 days before their expected period, in 93% of women 2 days before their expected period, and in 93% of women 1 day before their expected period, and Clearblue have resolved out that 1 in 4 women misread these pregnancy tests. Maybe, just maybe, you have to ask the question – are you dating in the wrong percentile?
Catrina (#78), I don’t understand your comment – can you clarify?
acannon at 79
If you believe Clearblue, 1 in 4 women can’t read a pregnancy test. The Clearblue argument is that the digital product they provide (which gives a readout on a digital display saying “PREGNANT” or not) is the solution. By implication 1 in 4 American women have problems following the instructions on a pregnancy test. In practice this is understandable (USA scores the lowest in national average IQ among the developed countries of the world at position 36 while Australia ranks 26). From these statistics one could project the presumption that maybe only 1 in 5 Australian women don’t know how to read a pregnancy test (I’m confident Possum would be able to provide more exact numbers). Following on from this one could conclude (and I stress that this is totally hypothetical) that Nick could maybe simply be swimming in the wrong pool or maybe wearing the wrong aftershave. But before anyone jumps on me – keep in mind that more than 45% of the American population believe that the non-existent final health care bill incorporates a “death panel”. These numbers show that there are a sizable bunch of people who are not ready willing or able to search out facts – and our numbers here in Australia are no so far removed from friends in the States.
I don’t often post on blogs because, frankly, I’m intimidated and my stance on issues often lacks the necessary conviction to withstand onslaught from other bloggers. This is not to say I’m ill-informed or uninterested–come on, I read Crikey!– it’s just that I find myself less partisan on many issues. Things are always more complex than the captions can, well, capture. And… I don’t feel as though anonymity protects squat or makes it more or less likely that I’ll contribute. There’s still no way of assuring that what you put out there will be interpreted as intended.
But I will back other women up on the time factor. While I’m doing the dishes and vacuuming, my housemate (male) is surfing the net; vigorously and competitively delving into public debate, his arms flailing and nostrils flared (on the inside). On the outside I’d think he was stone dead if his eyes didn’t occasionally blink and his fingers weren’t making up for the lack of facial expression.
I guess I don’t really blog because the idea of voluntarily committing to the possibility of having to justify myself feels like an unnecessary waste of my emotional energy- often stretched thin at the end of a long day.
Sorry guys (and girls), not likely to find a new recruit here but I promise to see how this attempt rolls.
#72
I note that News With Nipples think she has the ‘inside running’ on why women don’t blog and suggests that (amongst other reasons) perhaps women aren’t interested in Poss’ blog (didn’t seem to stop here reading it).
With a mere three responses to her retort, I guess she’s would indeed be the expert about lack of bloggers. To be fair though, that’s more responses than she has received on most of her other blog entries.
The irony is delicious.
Catrina
Let me clarify. None of the men I’m thinking of would actually say that is the reason they don’t blog or comment on blogs, I simply contend that if you dig down to the crux of the matter it will actually be something like that, even if they don’t realise it themselves. And I’m thinking of some of the most stereotypically blokey guys I know – they’re not going to say that, or realise that, but I’ll bet it is the impersonal nature of online communication that fails to engage them (Sure, I was also thinking of some gay men, but I was deliberately casting a wide net).
The observation I make from that second point is that the logic that the impersonal nature of online communication would seem more suited to more stereotypically blokey guys isn’t actually supported by the immediate evidence from people I know, not just my own attitude. For instance, if I think of the people I went to high school with, it generally seems that the more stereotypically blokey the guy, the less they use the internet (and it’s not a question of intelligence either). The conclusion being that it seems to me that a lot of the issues being raised as to why women are apparently under-represented in political blogging are things that may actually transcend gender more than some have suggested.
Can I just add that I wouldn’t have used my full name except that since it was already on my Crikey account I just decided not to bother changing it.
See, now this is an example of what some others have pointed to, which could be why many people, male, female, straight, gay, or whatever other way you want to classify people, couldn’t be bothered engaging in these kinds of conversations. Why should I bother engaging in a conversation like this? I shouldn’t have even bothered dignifying such unconstructive comments with a response. Sorry – I’ll bugger off.
Nick at 83
I going to go out on a limb and suggest that we aren’t as small as you may believe. But I’m only working on a hunch, and I’m guessing that Possum doesn’t have good numbers either. As to participation and preferences – there are lots of things to spend one’s time on and about the only significant factor that I can thing of that may be relevant to the disparity that Possum is talking about is the degree to which Australian women have been exposed to disciplines of mathematics, statistics, science, philosophy, and sociology. I’m guessing that some of the European Member States (Eastern and Western) would show a significantly higher level of active engagement (per. capita) by educated women than what we see here in Australia or the USA. But that’s just me speculating – I’ll leave it to Possum to crunch numbers and tell us about a mathematically founded rationalisation (with cool graphs) – or maybe he won’t in which case we can assume that the little rodent’s medication is overdue.
Hello Possum, up there on the Rio Tweed: Thank you for inadvertently-I’m sure-illustrating my hypothesis for me. As per your instructions I found myself reading The Mems of Production. Straight away Lisa Gunders, writer of the blog, sails into a long whinge about being so busy doing housework that it’s impossible to find the time to get into the subject of females and the lack of same interested in political commenting.
Predictable and boring batshit! If she really wanted to mix it with the best of them she would organize the kids to be feeding her breakfast whilst she is writing. At the same time he who must be obeyed should be doing the cooking. There’s no law which says ‘Thou must carry on like a Carmelite nun because one is a mother’.
WTF wants to read about a woman whingeing about her having to slave in the kitchen?
I’m sure the famous war photographer, Margaret Bourke White, didn’t stuff around having to feed a family. She worked for Life magazine (which didn’t take kindly to professional little women) She just got on to the nearest available ‘plane which could get her to where she was told to go. Then she proceeded to take memorable photographs of a world in meltdown.
Which perspective would be more interesting to any reader; that of an accredited war photographer during WWII, or a woman bitching about her housekeeping and making excuses for not participating in a subject she professes to be interested in?
Thememesofproduction is written for a female audience and it shows. There is a particularly nasty putdown by one of the few male correspondents. I shall draw a discrete curtain across the less than interesting posts of the female audience.
The comment in these pages, written by Victoria Collins, was excellent, informative and newsworthy.
Catrina at 85
From the Fuck Politeness link:
“I don’t mean to shock you with the revelation that the political and philosophical universe doesn’t centre around the nattering of a couple of dozen overly privileged middle class uni graduates in white collar employment,”
Ditto.
As a woman who has been exposed to most of the disciplines you list, I’m mystified as to why people trained to understand the exclusionary nature of specialist languages and knowledges choose to perpetuate it. Women aren’t the only ones at a disadvantage.
Possum is one of the very rare specialist bloggers who bothers to explain things for lay people. Others seem to think it’s So, You Think You Can Intellectualise?
It’s one of my bug bears.
*gets back in box*
@ Poss
berryblade dot word press dot com
hobjobbles mum at 87
That’s one scary site!
#86, Venise Alstergren,
Thank you for the kind words!
Maybe the reason I’ve never done bitch and moan is because I’m no longer hormonal, like the younger women, lol!
Who has time? Seriously. I’d love it if I had time to think, let alone write.
Barbara L- you obviously had time to read it. It’s not that hard.
I think the absence of blogs written by women that fit into your category of politcal is pretty much illustrated by the comments here. Is Venise @86 for real? And Victoria @90, are you actually diminishing the contribution of women to the blogosphere to “hormones”?
News With Nipples, Fuck Politeness and Aileeen all write great political posts that I read regularly and frequently agree with. By contrast I’ve only just got a Crikey login because of this stupidity. I guess I’ll stay away.
Jeez, Poss, you’ve upped your female quotient with this post, haven’t you? One of my brothers once told me the best way to get female attention was to wail, long and hard, “why don’t girls like me?” Worked every time.
Never liked that boy.
Next up you’ll be posting photos of your cat.
I’ve just updated the post with some clarification of what I was asking.
It’ll disappear next post Ms Twain, my demographics are set in concrete.
Sounds from your clarification that the hoydens gave you a good going over, Poss. Hope you enjoyed it.
Perhaps the answer to your question is that the best political analysts, female or male, are writing for newspapers? That’ll set the marsupials among the columbiformes.
Par for the course, different worlds and quite different languages and meanings.
Best political analysts writing for Newspapers? Nah, the best write for business intelligence firms – public media is a distant second.
Hmmm, having just visited all sites to take in the view, as it were, it would seem there’s as much snark, if not outright unprocessed raging, around on some of these blogs as elsewhere in more blokey territory.
Perhaps your question is a quite complex one, Poss, not easily or neatly answered. At the very least the age cohort of women participating in commenting, let alone running a blog would have to be a confounding variable. For instance, while I’m sure I could learn, I currently do not have the skills or knowledge to set up a website.
I suppose I’m a bit of a dinosaur, having learned SPSS on a computer occupying half a room, requiring bits of punched cardboard to be fed into it to get the program to run. Sophisticated abacus, I suppose.
For someone of my generation, profession and political interest/orientation, I would rather that people actually thought about what they wanted to say about the topic, rather than simply reacting rapidly, when often confusion is the only result. I see this quite a lot on Pollbludger.
Something I noticed today as well, being on the receiving end of most of it!
SPSS on punchcards? No kidding!
It’s one of the pitfalls of a heavy comments section I suppose – especially on anything where opinions get strongly held. It’s why I often seem rude by responding tardily to questions in some of the comments on some threads – I dont like the threads very long, and like to keep them tight and on topic to avoid that sort of argy bargy here.
It’s also why I rarely run threads like this! Although this has been unreactionary so far which really deserves a round of applause to all. So saying, most of silliness was caught elsewhere.
Oh ffs, really – is the Gender Issue in the “First World” truly a legitimate question anymore??
Most women i know enjoy the company of other adults of both genders – as do men, lesbians and gay men. If men blog more on pseph sites then perhaps they enjoy the number-crunching thing more than most women. And if women Raise the Social Issues more, then good for us. Both are interesting and both are legitimate. And in my experience both are fodder for thought, analysis and comment.
In a time of global warming, financial crisis, religious -based terrorism and general mayhem, do we really need to snark at each other over “female/woman” and play the victim?
I don’t like being bullied . neither do the males I know that have encountered it.
As the boy who created The Memes of Production, I’d like the opportunity to correct one or two of Venice’s more amusingly self-important misapprehensions.
Memes, which is spelt m e m e s, by the way, is not specifically “written for a female audience”, whatever that might mean. In fact, what does that mean? I have a strong feeling Venice thinks a “female audience” consists of people who are in it for the scone recipes. A cursory overview of our readers’ comments would tell a very different story, I feel.
I’d also like Venice to be more specific in her claims about the “nasty putdown” and I also wonder how she knows the majority of our commentators are women? Looking at the database, I see a pretty even split, frankly.
And I’m not sure Margaret Bourke White even had a family to feed, did she?
Venise, not Venice. Gee, it’s annoying when someone gets your name wrong, isn’t it?
Still, I’ll take my lumps for that.
Harry “Snapper” Organs, I think I worked on that computer with you.
SPSS on punchcards – ah that brings back memories – none of them good!
This is how it was when I studied:
First, you had to write all your data on some 50 metre by 50 metre data entry sheet. Then, you had to enter all your data into a machine that cut pieces out of about 8 million little cards. There was a job card, a user card, some other #%$$@& type of card and a host of data cards. You kept them in an old shoe box with elastic bands around them to hold them in place. And boy were you in trouble if you got the @#$%^ things out of order.
Then to run your program, you’d enter the cards into this little machine that ran the cards across some @#$%! reading thingy. The data would then be sent electronically to the top of the library building – the 16th floor (this was at UNSW) where the superduper computer was, to crunch the numbers. Then, you had wait in queue for your data to be calculated – there was a big demand – it usually took about 30 mins before anything came out.
Then, the “icing on the cake” – the printing machine (and it was a machine, about 5 metres by 5 metres) would start chugging away – chugg, chugg, chugg, chugg. At least then we thought, OK, now we can read the results. NO @#$%^!@ WAY! What was often printed out were the dreaded words SYNTAX ERROR please re-enter the data!
Ah happy days.
As for the discussion at hand, I’ve found it helpful not to know the gender or the age of any of my fellow bloggers as it allows you to focus on what being written only. Often, it’s a bit of a surprise when that information becomes known re age or gender.
Why there are fewer women? I have little to add what has been said, but I would like to reinforce the view that there is a lot of writing without thinking, without fact, and without consideration of other bloggers. There is far too many angry attacks on others with a different point of view. Rather than try to reason with someone, by offering some facts or other evidence, the “discussion” can degenerate into pointless, and seemingly, endless slanging matches.
This is what shutdown Bryan Palmer’s site back in 2007 and continues to infect the Pollbludger site now, despite William’s best efforts. I can’t speak for too many other sites, LP perhaps.
This kind of behaviour doesn’t encourage new entrants to have a say, whether they are female or male.
Personally, I prefer OzForums. http://www.ozforums.com.au/index.php
It allows you post any topic on which you wish to start a discussion and is self moderated by four of the particpating bloggers and there is much, much less anger.
And there’s an edit function!
Hi Possum,
I think this point was made earlier in the comments, but I have to weigh in.
The question really needs to be “Why can’t we *see* the female political bloggers?” not “Where are the female political bloggers”.
I’d refer you this wonderful post on the Geek Feminism blog: Where are all the men bloggers?
http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/19/where-are-all-the-men-bloggers/
But I think that’s sidestepped the original question, which is why are relatively few women subscribing to Crikey. I believe you end up with the readership or the online community you create. And while it’s much easier to build one than change one, I’d like to see Crikey asking what it can do differently to attract more female editors, writers, bloggers, readers and commenters, and then maybe the subscriptions would follow. But that question presupposes Crikey’s interested in making changes to its product. *shrug*
Hope all is well in Possumland.
Cheers,
Sarah
NICK CALDWELL: I was just about to nail you for the constant misspelling of my name. Admittedly, both words mean the same thing.
If you had taken the trouble to really read my comments you would have realized my main gripe is against women wanting special recognition just because of their gender. Their femaleness isn’t what gives them a unique understanding. Everyone has a unique perspective, irrespective of gender. And part of that gripe is encapsulated by women coming out with statements that they are too weighed down with housework to be able to comment on a subject. A subject which they profess to be interested in.
As a writer/editor yourself, I can imagine your enthusiasm, not to mention the expression on your face if a male writer/blogger/commenter/farmer came up to you saying, “I really wanted to write my opinion on you last column, but I was too busy shoveling shit in the cow-shed”.
The nasty put-down, and I’m damned if I am going to go back to look at it, seemed to me to be written by a man assuming a Deep South of the USA accent. Perhaps he was merely being avuncular.
I’ll take your word, I think, if you say your readership has a roughly even split between the sexes. It’s just that it seems more heavily weighted towards women.
It was your writer Lisa Gunder who set the tone in your latest? issue, with a long whine about being too busy with housework, to write. As she did write the article I can only assume she was playing to her audience.
Positively gleaming with self-satisfaction, you promptly indulged in a nauseating bit of journalese with the following self-insertive quote. “We’re” ¿are you a woman? “Working on parents committees and progress associations and community groups. We’re working on stalls and at working bees.” This is unctuous tripe, and incredibly patronizing. Anyway, WTF do you live; Oyen? Or are indulging in a bit of bucolic whimsy?
You are encouraging your female readers not to have a shot at commenting. With the result of merely re-enforcing the stereotype. That’s not editing that is butchery. Subtle butchery, but butchery nevertheless. Perhaps a Judas-goat would be a better analogy?
I don’t know if Margaret Bourke White had a family or not, and the point is irrelevant. She was not a woman to be sitting around moaning. She was a woman of action, an achiever. And somehow or other I get the feeling that women plus achievement aren’t uppermost in your mind.
If I am wrong, then I will, of course, grovel.
Venise, I’m sorry that I cannot “really read” your commentary as I find it to be almost completely incoherent and what little is coherent is probably actionably defamatory.
In any case, I invite you to retract your repugnant implication of sexism on my part.
Play nice you two.
NEW COIN: I’m just coming out of a deep faint. WTF did you imagine that I’d put @86 after my name? Thankfully I can say with total honesty I’m nowhere near that age. Perhaps it was Victoria Collins. She is a very interesting person indeed; I think she was the first Aussie female blogger. And it is well worth reading her main comment in this blogfest.
Cheers
Venise
NICK CALDWELL: There is nothing in my comment to suggest that I’m querying your sex. What is the matter with you; can’t you even read my comments before flying off the handle? If you are that fucking sensitive I suggest you give up infesting the pages of Crikey.
Invitation declined. I retract nothing!
My abject apologies to Poss.
NICK CALDWELL: Sex/sexism. It’s your problem honey, not mine. And you really do not like women who can bite back. Thank you for underlining my hypothesis.
110
Venise, the “@86″ that is in newcoin’s comment is a reference to the 86th comment in this thread.
GHOST WHO VOTES: Thank you for this information. It will be remembered in future. I am always grateful to people who have something instructive to say. Far better than the lunatic snuffles of the hyper-sensitive and patronizing brigade. The ones who claim to anyone who will listen about their great respect for women. Who, of course, are the same ones who are tunneling under the ground in order to undermine the very women they profess to admire.