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miss_s_b
This post is dedicated to Jo Swinson MP and Count Packula.
According to the office of National Statistics NB, this is a .pdf download, of the internet-accessing population in the UK as a whole (51% female), 6% of men write a blog, and 8% of women. More women are blogging than men. This is a fact. Of those who state their gender on Dreamwidth, the majority are female, and the same goes for Livejournal. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo... All these are female-dominated, to a greater or lesser extent. It's harder to find stats for blogger or wordpress, but I suspect they are out there somewhere.
Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly that although the gender breakdown of people accessing the internet is roughly equal, men spend more time at it. More men READ blogs than women (26% to 16%), more men internet shop than women, more men watch TV and download films than women... Yet with the upload of user-created content there is virtually no difference (25 and 24%). So women are putting their views out there, in blogs and on YouTube and in fora, but the men are not listening.
To take an example closer to home, Lib Dem Voice has a daily feature where they link to two notable news stories and two blog posts they feel are worth recommending. The two blog posts are nearly always both by male posters. The people who write the feature are nearly all male. Men link to men. However, having looked at the last 300 posts on Lib Dem Blogs to see what the pool is like that the LDV editors are choosing from, 216 of them are by male posters, 45 by female, 31 by non-gendered pseudonums or group blogs, 6 by the Honourable Lady Mark who defies categorisation, and 2 by fluffy animals with boys who help them type. That's a heavy male bias right there, so even if the editors of LDV are consciously seeking out good female posts, they are going to find it difficult to find them. Now, I know for a fact that there are at least three female bloggers on my f-list who are Lib Dems, and yet have not submitted themselves to Lib Dem Blogs. So there is a self-selection problem here.
But there is also a definitional problem. I had to have quite a long discussion with That Tory Blogger to get him to countinnerbrat as a political blog. She posts about gender disparity and sexuality and things like that all the time, but because she doesn't post about the party politics, she wasn't considered a political blogger. Dan Dan the Wikio Man and I had a similar discussion about The F-Word and various other feminist blogs. Wikio had them listed under
Yet another part of the problem is that although what might be termed initial content (blogs, tweets, etc.) is majority-female, promotion tools, such as Digg, Technorati, blog aggregators like Lib Dem Blogs, etc. are majority-male. So men recommend posts by men to other men. None of this is necessarily a conscious bias, it's just the way things are.
For men... Look outside your bubbles. Ryan, instead of waiting for Lib Dem Bloggers to submit themselves to you, go out and look for them. LDV editors, instead of just scanning through Lib Dem blogs to find stuff that might be interesting, compile your own reading lists and look outside what we can all access through the aggregator anyway. Everyone, cross promote your female friends and fellow bloggers. Make a conscious effort to read the fantastic female blogs there are out there, like Feminist Law Professors,innerbrat, Angry Black Woman, nanila, Geeka Chicas, even our own dear Charlotte Gore, as opposed to just reading the blokes recommended to you by other blokes.
Women bloggers are here. We want to be heard. All we need is for people to actually hear us.
This blog is proudly sponsored by
According to the office of National Statistics NB, this is a .pdf download, of the internet-accessing population in the UK as a whole (51% female), 6% of men write a blog, and 8% of women. More women are blogging than men. This is a fact. Of those who state their gender on Dreamwidth, the majority are female, and the same goes for Livejournal. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo... All these are female-dominated, to a greater or lesser extent. It's harder to find stats for blogger or wordpress, but I suspect they are out there somewhere.
So why are most of the "top" bloggers men?
Why is the assumption that the blogosphere is male-dominated so entrenched? Why is there a blokosphere?Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly that although the gender breakdown of people accessing the internet is roughly equal, men spend more time at it. More men READ blogs than women (26% to 16%), more men internet shop than women, more men watch TV and download films than women... Yet with the upload of user-created content there is virtually no difference (25 and 24%). So women are putting their views out there, in blogs and on YouTube and in fora, but the men are not listening.
To take an example closer to home, Lib Dem Voice has a daily feature where they link to two notable news stories and two blog posts they feel are worth recommending. The two blog posts are nearly always both by male posters. The people who write the feature are nearly all male. Men link to men. However, having looked at the last 300 posts on Lib Dem Blogs to see what the pool is like that the LDV editors are choosing from, 216 of them are by male posters, 45 by female, 31 by non-gendered pseudonums or group blogs, 6 by the Honourable Lady Mark who defies categorisation, and 2 by fluffy animals with boys who help them type. That's a heavy male bias right there, so even if the editors of LDV are consciously seeking out good female posts, they are going to find it difficult to find them. Now, I know for a fact that there are at least three female bloggers on my f-list who are Lib Dems, and yet have not submitted themselves to Lib Dem Blogs. So there is a self-selection problem here.
But there is also a definitional problem. I had to have quite a long discussion with That Tory Blogger to get him to count
innerbrat as a political blog. She posts about gender disparity and sexuality and things like that all the time, but because she doesn't post about the party politics, she wasn't considered a political blogger. Dan Dan the Wikio Man and I had a similar discussion about The F-Word and various other feminist blogs. Wikio had them listed under General, because
feminism isn't politics. The narrow definition of politics to include only geekery about party politics and the Westminster Bubble excludes women.
Yet another part of the problem is that although what might be termed initial content (blogs, tweets, etc.) is majority-female, promotion tools, such as Digg, Technorati, blog aggregators like Lib Dem Blogs, etc. are majority-male. So men recommend posts by men to other men. None of this is necessarily a conscious bias, it's just the way things are.
So how do we change the way things are?
Well, for women, I would suggest starting to use promotion tools much more extensively. Don't worry about whether or not you will fit in, or whether or not the men want to hear you. Barge into the room and make yourself heard. Submit yourself to Lib Dem Blogs, Digg yourself, join Bloggers' Circle, Technorati and Wikio. Don't assume that people who are interested in your blog will find it by themselves. But also read, comment on, and interact with male bloggers. @reply people on twitter with posts you think they might be interested in (like Dazmundo did to me yesterday). Sponsor my blog, FFS! Nearly all of my sponsors have been male. Put yourself out there. Make yourselves noticeable and people will notice you.For men... Look outside your bubbles. Ryan, instead of waiting for Lib Dem Bloggers to submit themselves to you, go out and look for them. LDV editors, instead of just scanning through Lib Dem blogs to find stuff that might be interesting, compile your own reading lists and look outside what we can all access through the aggregator anyway. Everyone, cross promote your female friends and fellow bloggers. Make a conscious effort to read the fantastic female blogs there are out there, like Feminist Law Professors,
innerbrat, Angry Black Woman, nanila, Geeka Chicas, even our own dear Charlotte Gore, as opposed to just reading the blokes recommended to you by other blokes.Women bloggers are here. We want to be heard. All we need is for people to actually hear us.
This blog is proudly sponsored by
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 04:59 pm (UTC)Why? I don't have the time to read most of the blogs that are on there at the moment. It's a simple system to get added, the author just needs to send me an email with their name, blog address and membership number. If you want more female bloggers, why aren't you asking/persuading them to send me an email?
Ryan
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:02 pm (UTC)I am. And I understand that you're busy. I'm just offering a way for you to help if you want to.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:40 pm (UTC)I have now noticed that you are asking people to email me and hope that you (and everyone else) encourage more people who are party members to take part. I really don't care if all you blog about is football, strictly come dancing or polar bears as it can be more exciting than 20 posts on what Cameron might have just said.
Everyone is welcome, including the mad ones who insist on changing their blog platform as often as they change their underwear.
ps, might have finally got this OpenID thing sorted
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:54 pm (UTC)I think that this is the important thing to get across. I know that at least one of the Lib Dem ladies I read hasn't submitted herself because she doesn't think she's relevant.
YAY!
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:07 pm (UTC)And, though completely unscientific, if you look at my bookmarked blogs and journals, they pretty much are all written by men. That's never really occurred to me before. food for thought methinks...
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:11 pm (UTC)CGB Awards
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:14 pm (UTC)The problem is, such things get attacked by a large number of men who seem to think they are permanently persecuted for their maleness (this is far from the truth but a whole generation of men have grown up during the period when feminism started to wane thinking this) and women who don't like an issue being made out of their gender.
I would still maintain that organising a blog awards like this is no different from, say, setting up Feministing, but having done it once I think it would have to be lead by a woman next time around.
By the way, your recaptcha is asking me to type in "Andre jaffa" - is it being operated by Katie Price by any chance?
Re: CGB Awards
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:21 pm (UTC)I detest positive discrimination on a visceral level. I hate the idea that women can't succeed on their own merits. And yet the CGB awards were a success, did increase traffic to female blogs, and did make people sit up and notice.
I think I have things to think about myself, here.
((and the Captcha claims to be random. I don't know who operates it, or how it is done. The thought of it being KP is amusing, though))
Re: CGB Awards
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:36 pm (UTC)I'm still torn on the CGB awards, it annoys me that female bloggers are both ignored and margininalised, but it also annoys me that female bloggers put themselves into little self imposed ghettos and don't look outside them (especially true of LJ/DW users, who pretty much ignore everywhere else most of the time).
Re: CGB Awards
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:27 pm (UTC)Oddly, most of the *male* (UK politics) bloggers I read I discovered through you - through your netcasts and links. The female ones (yourself, Charlotte, Debi, Laurie etc) I tend to have discovered through other sources, with the exception of Alix, who I think I first saw through your links.
And Debi is *FAR* more a political blogger than Dale. I defy anyone to find a single post in, say, the last month where Dale has talked about a single actual *IDEA*. His blog is gossip, and the fact that it's gossip about people who share a particular job doesn't make it any less so. If I started a blog about who in my office is likely to get a promotion and who hates their boss, that wouldn't be a tech blog. Real political blogs, ones that matter, deal with ideas...
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 06:43 pm (UTC)When you say, "LDV editors, instead of just scanning through Lib Dem blogs to find stuff that might be interesting, compile your own reading lists and look outside what we can all access through the aggregator anyway" I think there are two issues.
First, the easy one - yes, many people do like and use the aggregator. But for many other people it has too high a volume of posts and so they like getting a selection of posts picked out.
Second, what about blogs that aren't on the aggregator? That's a tougher one as the easy and defensive response is to say, "Ah, but the aggregator advertises how easy it is to get added to it - just an email; the Golden Dozen each week highlights posts submitted via LibDig which any party member can use; and there's now the Friday 5 which highlights a range of other non-party member blogs again via LibDig; oh and of course you can always a post a comment up highlighting a story that you think should have been in one of those but wasn't".
All of the above is true ... but having this range of opportunities available isn't actually catching that many suggestions from that many people. That's certainly not for want of trying from the Lib Dem Voice team in terms of the number of those routes we make available. So what is it that's missing from the mix?
I don't know the answer to that one for sure, though I suspect part of it is that all those routes work better for people who are willing to thrust their views on others (I think this post is fab! pay attention to it!) and that might therefore not get used by some people.
Perhaps people like yourself Jennie who draw on a wide range of blogs that often don't get mentioned can help by LibDigging etc a bit more? And if you've got other ideas as to what the LDV team could do, please do say...
Mark
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 07:56 pm (UTC)I gave up on Lib Dig because people never check to see what other people have dug and redig it; thus you get millions of items with one dig, and no real trend emerging. I'd probably use it if it was more intuitive, but TBH, sharing on twitter is easier, and I do that a lot more.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 09:00 pm (UTC)On the second point - perhaps that's the issue. LibDig has two roles: (a) a way of getting other blog posts picked up and publicised (e.g. through the Friday Five) and (b) a social networking function. The latter really requires a volume of traffic that LibDig doesn't (yet) have, so is that what's putting people off using it also for the former? There is a slight chicken and egg here because if more people used it for (a) then (b) would become true too.
Getting people to suggest links via Twitter could work better given the point you make about now using it a lot to share links isn't exclusive to you by any means, though I suspect it would produce complaints from non-Twitter users about them not wanting to have to use it to recommend links :-)
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 09:09 pm (UTC)I don't think Lib Dig is ever going to reach critical mass, because it will take too much effort from too many people.
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Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 05:52 pm (UTC)www.AlexFoster.me.uk
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:22 pm (UTC)There. That's more accurate, right?
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 06:31 pm (UTC)The thing is, that I don't want to get in that room. I spend my working life in a male dominated area, I'm quite happy to splash around in my female-dominated part of the blogosphere.
So straight white cis men don't consider sexuality/race/gender politics to be Real Politics. If they want to complain that their self-defined circle of men doens't include enough women, it's no skin off my nose.
Also, I can use my energy to promote my blog or to wirte my blog. Not both.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 07:57 pm (UTC)I was talking to Him about you because you are one of the best bloggers out there, and it might not be any skin off your nose, but it annoys me that They purposefully ignore bloggers like you and then complain that you aren't there.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:02 pm (UTC)I used to be annoyed that the boys weren't letting me in their clubhouse, then I realised that it was much more fun playing outside.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:07 pm (UTC):(
You know me: I just want to play with all genders at once.
;)
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:14 pm (UTC)Also, to play in some of the politicoblogging sandboxes, I need to go to the clubhouse and get my membership badge. I'd rather not do that for a number of reasons.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:19 pm (UTC)Also, the expectation that you should be DOING things when in actuality it's incredibly difficult to live from day to day is both annoying and difficult to resist.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 10:25 pm (UTC)(I'm not entirely comfortable with the "us" I'm including myself in there, but somehow I get the impression that whether I choose to put myself in it or not, I'm going to be put in it for the purposes of this discussion.)
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:12 pm (UTC)Dale and his ilk somehow manage to define for the mainstream public what a 'political blogger' is, and are going to be the first port of call for those who don't have the ability to search out marginal voices. While I can understand not wanting to be part of a club that has Iain Dale as a member, that doesn't - to my mind - relieve *him* of the obligation to invite you in, and also to point out to people that 'other clubs are available'...
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:22 pm (UTC)But I am not obliged to play by the appropriate rules in order to get Dale to notice me. If he ignores me or defines his circle in a way that excludes me, then complains about the lack-of-me, then he's being hypocritical and anyone who hears him is allowed to tell him so.
But I don't have to break down the walls from the outside, nor do I have to remember the password to get in the front door. Not unless I want inside. And I don't, I'm happy outside the circle. Because I know I exist, and you know I exist, and anyone who actually wants to read a blog by a woman about comics and science and identity politics... well, I'm sure they'll work out the best place to look.
I am not letting down the sisterhood if I don't obsess about my Wikio ranking.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:28 pm (UTC)I agree with EVERY word you've said here. I just don't think that should relieve Dale (or anyone else in a position of privilege) from the obligation of trying to invite you in.
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Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, October 19th, 2009 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 01:02 pm (UTC)Current price for a month is £100
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Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, December 14th, 2009 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 01:20 pm (UTC)Add that to the list of reasons why I don't care about Wikio.
This isn't a new debate, of course - I can remember having discussions about 'where are the female political bloggers?' back when I started blogging in 2003, and the same conclusions came up then. I think there's always been that idea that to gain entrance to the political bloggers club, you must only blog about politics, and usually in terms of 'geekery about party politics and the Westminster Bubble'. That gets defined as 'political blogging' and people see that and think 'that's not what I'm doing, therefore I'm obviously not a political blogger.'
Of course, the other issue is that people who are quite content writing and talking to a (relatively) small circle of friends/acquaintances/people on the same platform or site aren't going to feel the same need to relentlessly self-promote as the self-styled 'leading political bloggers'.
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Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 04:33 pm (UTC)It's not any one thing that's causing it, it's systemic.
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Date: Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 09:40 am (UTC)Jo Christie-Smith