Thursday
Mar182010
Margaret Wente asks "why are bloggers male?"
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Last week, Margaret Wente from the Globe and Mail wrote an article about the nightmare gender gap in Canada. She concluded by saying:
Then today, she wrote a column called Why are bloggers male? and said:
I'm no stranger to having guys try to mansplain things to me, but I certainly don't think women are lacking in opinions or in a willingness to share them. I do, however, have a partial explanation for that nightmare gender gap Wente was talking about. When influential women are ignorant to the numerous women's voices on the Internet (check out the entire BlogHer community and then some), when the voices of many women are dismissed as endearing, cute and girly, and when the voices of those women who are most oppressed are ignored altogether, that gender gap is perpetuated.
Thank you, Margaret, for proving your own point about how hard it is to change the conversation.
Update: On Friday, March 19, 2010 at 12:00pm EST, Tamara Plant (from MOM Magazine) and I will be taking on Margaret Wente in a live chat on the Globe and Mail's website. See Women Bloggers Take on Margaret Wente and join in! I hope you'll come back here afterward to share your perspectives on the discussion.
Unfortunately, these issues won't be honestly addressed so long as the old-time dogma maintains its stranglehold in academe, labour groups and public discourse. It's hard to change the conversation when the oppression of women is such a good racket.
Then today, she wrote a column called Why are bloggers male? and said:
Men clearly have an urge to blog that women lack. Like extreme snowmobiling, the blogosphere is dominated by men. Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.
...
Sarah and I believe the urge to blog is closely related to the sex-linked compulsion known as male answer syndrome. MAS is the reason why guys shoot up their hands first in math class. MAS also explains why men are so quick to have opinions on subjects they know little or nothing about.
I'm no stranger to having guys try to mansplain things to me, but I certainly don't think women are lacking in opinions or in a willingness to share them. I do, however, have a partial explanation for that nightmare gender gap Wente was talking about. When influential women are ignorant to the numerous women's voices on the Internet (check out the entire BlogHer community and then some), when the voices of many women are dismissed as endearing, cute and girly, and when the voices of those women who are most oppressed are ignored altogether, that gender gap is perpetuated.
Thank you, Margaret, for proving your own point about how hard it is to change the conversation.
Update: On Friday, March 19, 2010 at 12:00pm EST, Tamara Plant (from MOM Magazine) and I will be taking on Margaret Wente in a live chat on the Globe and Mail's website. See Women Bloggers Take on Margaret Wente and join in! I hope you'll come back here afterward to share your perspectives on the discussion.
Reader Comments (41)
Umm, can I just say no one had there hand up faster than me in math class.
I'm so much more opinionated than the men in my life that this is just astounding to me. Plus, the quotes you shared (I haven't yet read the whole piece) seem to be demeaning to both men and women which is so counterproductive.
Well, I was about to say the same as you about the hand raising... and the being opinionated.
I'm with you on the mansplaining...but seriously? Has she been on the internet lately? I couldn't agree with your post more.
When I read that post this morning I was truly confused. I almost thought it was an April Fool's spoof or something.
I know I tend to research things ad nauseam before writing, but it would've taken about a nanosecond for Wente to uncover the vast female blogging culture. For example, when you Google "women bloggers" there are some odd 17,900,000 results.
Nicely said.
Which is just my polite, female, non-opinionated way of jumping up and down and fist-pumping. But we wouldn't want to derail Ms. Wente's apparent mission to set gender equality back a couple of decades in the quest for pageviews on her column, would we?
Wow, I'd be interested in seeing stats about male vs. female bloggers. Of course, by the nature of my interests (and my career in an online space made up almost entirely of women), I could be blinded to all the male bloggers out there -- the ones I read are by women! :) The online communities I visit are populated mostly by women (and we're pretty opinionated...) And talk shows -- they're dominated by men? Really? Is it just that the two biggest names out there are women, are the rest really all men? I'm actually curious.
Completely anecdotally, I know a lot more men who have zero interest in communicating with strangers online...
So, she did absolutely no research before writing that. I can name only one blog I read that is by a man alone, and only a couple that have male contributors.
" It is clear therefore, that not only are personal weblogs
dominated by younger females, but that females also spend
more effort blogging than men."
Interesting article here: https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Spring/2006/SS-06-03/SS06-03-032.pdf
This perception is the main reason I brought together a group of serious green women bloggers to form the Green Moms Carnival. Even in the "progressive" area of environmentalism, women get short thrift - and especially the "Mom bloggers."
It is well known (at least by marketers and environmental non-profits) that women's attention to environmental issues increase exponentially after they become mothers, yet recently I read a blog post from a prominent green male blogger and marketer asking if anyone else "had noticed" this phenomenon....! And this a year after our group of amazing green women bloggers won the Shorty Award for Best Green Content on Twitter with our @GreenMoms account!
We still get no respect...
Where have I been!!! I have obviously been missing out on mainstream "Blog-man-dom"... Really very few women out in there in blogland!!! Reeaaalllly!!!!
Where on earth did she get that notion? No shortage of women blogging that I've noticed, and on a huge range of topics. Has she ever read any blogs at all?
I love it! Nice catch. And please, please, please forward this post to her and her editor. Keep up the good work.
If I wrote this, there would be a lot more snark. And a LOT more swearing. So thank you, Annie, for saying it in a way that won't get bleeped by the censors.
("Why are bloggers male?" is she *^%# KIDDING?! --ok, stopping now.)
so basically, as Wente defines it, blogging is the male-dominated genre of respouting opinions about male-dominated current events.
anything else, i guess, is just...feminized and therefore dismissable. "mommy blogs" are not blogs. they are their slightly embarrassing little sisters. and Wente pulls the old trick of women writers in the male mainstream not acknowledging the feminine for fear somebody will - gawd - notice that SHE's a girl and dismiss her with the same hairbows.
i get how presenting ourselves with sippy cups may help contribute to some of this, though i always assumed that stuff was semi-ironic. just like the mommy-blogger label itself.
My opinion (and I have one) is Wente's article is pure BS. And she knows it.
As you likely saw a couple months ago, the National Post's editorial board posted a piece about women's studies... and basically went on to blame everything wrong in the world on the fact that women now have rights. I will not link to this article as it's absurd and clearly a ploy to get angry women to link to the post, thus boosting page hits, thus boosting ad revenue. Case in point, the article now resides on the 'most popular stories' page
My hunch is Wente saw that and perhaps needed to produce an article that got results. Perhaps her boss is angry that her recent articles haven't been getting much response. OR maybe it was just for fun.
The point is, the fact that a journalist will give up her integrity and reputation to get a few hits is rather disgusting. That should be what we are complaining about.
Gah. Just, gah! I don't have good words. :(
I honestly couldn't tell if her article was meant to be serious or sarcastic when I read it. I guess my school was unusual because I mostly remember the girls being the first to raise their hands in class. And of all the family blogs I read, about 95% of them are managed by the mom. And then there's twitter. It's funny, as my husband is way more social than me, at least in person, but he sees no need whatsoever to blog or tweets whereas I do both obsessively.
Anyway, thanks for writing this, and pointing out the sad irony in Ms Wente's own writing.
well she was on that q panel where she said that feminism is over and that gender studies is a fad and that the curriculum in schools is supposed to indoctrinate you to be extreeme and hate guys and all that bs, and then admits that she didn't take a gender studies course in school ever. she speaks well but sometimes i just hear what she's thinking when she articulates her thoughts and i can't help but be thankful i am not like her. old people.
Honestly, it's Margaret Wente - I'm not surprised.
Personally, I think Wente was just trolling for comments out of controversy. You'd have to be living under a rock to put forth the following assertion that ends her piece: "But blogging? No way. That's guy stuff. And they are welcome to it."
Perhaps creating a "fake" controversy amongst male and female bloggers (or blog readers) is the only way she can motivate people to read her writing. At best, a cheap parlour trick.
Wow. I missed the article, but ... wow. Bloggers are mostly male?? I *don't* think so.
And your last paragraph completely and utterly nails it, IMO.
I didn't realize that I was male, I should thank Margaret for opening my eyes to this oversight. I'm sure the fact that I birthed those children will be something now of medical miracles. @@ Really though your last line was spot on, she proved that the narrative is being written in a narrow scope.
[...] Annie Urban constructs a well-thought argument that introduced me to the term ‘Mansplain‘ which unfortunately, the definition I am already familiar with. [...]
Hm... I used to be a blogger. Now that I have a child, am I a mommy blogger? Is my blog somehow less?
Do we, or Wente, know any statistics about blogging and gender? Because otherwise we could all be victims of the "everyone I know" syndrome. (E.g. "every blogger I know is female, so there must be a female majority, is a complete fallacy)
I noticed the Globe and Mail article for today's discussion says there are only 2500 BlogHer blogs. That's only the ad network blogs. You're going to set them straight, right? (That was rhetorical; of course you are, that's why you're doing it)
Emma:
They actually took that from a paragraph that I sent to them, but like the quotes from my blog that they used, once out of context they don't make as much sense/show the whole picture. Here is the paragraph that I sent them (they asked for my background blogging and my experience with other female bloggers):
When I read your post I immediately thought about this article that might be worth reading (also includes some research data on how many women are blogging, but that's a bit outdated by now):
Herring, S. C., Kouper, I., Scheidt, L. A., & Wright, E. (2004). Women and children last: The discursive construction of weblogs. In L. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the Blogosphere. Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html
I don't think we're necessarily saying that females are a majority in blogging, but that there *is* a significant population of female bloggers. So the idea that we're somehow few and far between is just plain wrong.
I always wonder this too. I don't mind being called a mommyblogger because that is a great group to be a part of but I didn't start out that way. I was the opposite I guess - an infertility blogger. I think labeling can marginalize and in articles like this is meant to.
In your earlier post about the New York Times, you said "I realized that I do not need to diminish others in order to prove my own worth." I just had to tell you that you "walked the talk" at the Globe online today. Very well done. Your co-blogger was, in my opinion, rude and offensive. Good for you for taking the high road.
Just wanted to drop in a link to the great stats tool that I mentioned during the chat. http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html
There are male bloggers?
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Completely agree. Thanks for staying classy!
The oddest part about this to me is that I feel like it is mostly women who are blogging. I guess I know that is because I read mostly mom/family blogs but still. I was so thrown off by this I actually found it kind of amusing.
Maybe it is a matter of where you choose to go on the net because most of the blog I read re written by women.
[...] (and fellow woman) Annie Urban of PhD In Parenting puts it well: “When influential women are ignorant to the numerous women’s voices on the Internet, [...]
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