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October 19, 2004
Women and girls are already blogging
My favorite bookstore in Boston, New Words, is hosting a Blogging for women and girls workshop, which will "teach women and girls the basics of blogging." The event description reads, bold mine:
They are? Shelley Powers says no, that's not true. She rails against the workshop's approach:
This raises a few questions for me:
1. Are women not already using weblogs to express themselves and to communicate? (Like Shelley, I think they are.)
2. If Top 100 "ego lists" of the most "influential" blogs don't include many women (and they don't), does that matter?
3. If it does matter, is a workshop like this the best way to get women to be more visible in the weblog world?
4. What if being visible isn't the value that weblog authors (especially women) glean from their sites?
Posted by Gina at 09:17 PM | Permalink
Comments
I pretty much only read blogs by women--not really on purpose. I just follow my interests through the blogosphere and end up at mostly female-authored blogs. I think what I like about reading writing blogs is the sense of community I get. The top 100 blogs don't always foster that. They're competitive; they have a point to make and they always want to be in the top 100. They don't stay there by fostering a sense of community. Some of the comments to Shelly's post also indicate that the nature of many women's blogs jumps from the personal to the poltical to the professional and back again. Mine certainly does. I have a professional blog though limited to the my college community. It's publicly available, but I keep only the college community in mind when I write it. I digress though. Yeah, there aren't as many highly visible blogs by women, but there are some and I think there are lots and lots of less read, but no less influential blogs by women out there. Millions of tiny drops can wear a hole into a boulder.
Posted by: Laura at October 19, 2004 09:53 PM
I agree with Laura--I find myself returning most often to women's blogs, but I still read a lot of men, too.
And I have to say that I have a loyal readership that I value, and I have been lucky enough to have sold one or two unpublished pieces to other publications because of the visibility of my blog.
That said, I would really like to be in the top 100 someday. And a big fat book contract, while I'm making wishes.
:-)
Posted by: Esther at October 19, 2004 11:45 PM
wow, i really found that "po’baby" quote incredibly offensive. we go on and on, and reasonably so, about opening up technology to being more friendly to women, and when someone makes an effort we spit on them like this? even if they have their demographics wrong, and frankly i don't care if they do or don't, i'd love to hear from women and girls whose voices are disenfranchised by the exclusivity of technology, no matter how hard or easy you might argue that technology to be. non-geeks, men or women, can still have interesting things to say.
Posted by: quinn at October 20, 2004 02:38 AM
There are different constructions of what blogging is. When you include what are sometimes called diarying blogs, yes, there are more women than men. But when you only consider journalism-style blogs, the men far outweigh the women. I have a funny feeling that their construction of the practice they are teaching is limited to the latter, which is why they see all the men.
Posted by: zephoria at October 20, 2004 05:20 AM
Zephoria's right, of course. I almost included in this post the LiveJournal numbers, which definitely skew female. But I thought that would get us all into a discussion of what's a blog, ie, LJ's aren't really a blog.
Question 4, about the value one gets from their weblog made me think of something Mena Trott of Movable Type wrote this past summer, here:
http://www.sixapart.com/corner/archives/2004/07/blogs_bandwidth.shtml
"...it took a couple years to realize that I didn't in fact want to write and reach tens of thousands. I wanted to reach 10 or 20 people, my close friends and family and a handful of webloggers I communicated with in real life (also known as friends)."
Posted by: Gina at October 20, 2004 08:33 AM
quinn, the statement you're making is that women can't 'handle' the tech of weblogging and have to be hand held through the process.And you consider what I said offensive? Thanks for assuming all women are techno-phobe incompetents.
How about making the technology friendly for non-techs, and stop differentiating by sex, okay?
Zephoria, sorry, don't agree with you. And please stop arbitrarily categorizing weblogging into sects. It is all weblogging. And where is your counts that more men are journalists than women? Based on your own viewpoint?
Posted by: Shelley at October 20, 2004 10:17 AM
Wait, I don't think Danah (zephoria) meant that *she* discounts journaling as weblogs, only that others do - like the folks putting together this event. This workshop is definitely geared towards teaching women to blog as pundits - not diarists - and to drive more traffic to their sites, shape opinions. From the description:
"Blogging is emerging a powerful opinion-making force, but though the technology is fairly cheap and widely available, most blogs are still written by men. This workshop will teach women and girls the basics of blogging, from the technical aspects of blog publishing and maintenance, to developing a personal voice, style, and area of focus, to how to drive traffic to your blog."
Posted by: Gina at October 20, 2004 10:23 AM
I don't know if this is statistically significant, but I was the first of my social group to start a blog (I now have three different personal blogs and two that I write for work), but now at least five women I know have jumped on the blogging bandwagon. None of my male friends are bloggers yet. A quick check of my "Favorite Blogs" list (blogs I read for sheer entertainment) shows 8 male bloggers, 2 group blogs that include both male and female contributors, and 15 female bloggers. I'd say my bookmarks of business blogs would reveal a similar ratio. I don't think women are holding back at all when it comes to blogging, no matter what kind of blogging we're talking about.
Posted by: Jane at October 20, 2004 10:39 AM
Gina, I agree with you and Danah that this seems to be the focus of this event. Or perhaps it really is to bring in lots more women and perhaps the mass will eventually break the scale if not tip it.
But I do not agree with Danah, or the organizers of this event, about an arbitrary split into 'diarists' and 'journalists' and all matter of '...ists' inbetween.
By splitting the statistical counts into categories, and then basing the categories on subjective measurements, we can get them to say whatever we want.
And by categorizing one person or another based on the software they use, this denies them a free range of thought within the software's technical limitations.
However, I have no doubts that this event is, as you say, focused at creating more little Wonkettes or perhaps Glenna Reynolds.
Posted by: Shelley at October 20, 2004 10:45 AM
Well, you know, there are even women who wrote their own journaling software, such as myself and Amy of domesticat.net. Clearly, women *can* handle technology.
Personally, I stopped using the word "blog" altogether, preferring "journal" instead. And since "journal" can mean anything written from personal to periodicals to newspapers, I feel it more accurately describes what it is that most of us do. Everyone seems to redefine "blog" to fit whatever they want it to be. And then you have people further diluting the word's meaning by downloading "blogging" software and calling whatever they use it for a blog (e.g. gadget blog).
Personally, I'm thoroughly disgusted that "blogging" books have taken over my coveted computer technology section of the bookstore, leaving less and less shelf space for books I might actually want to buy.
Posted by: chris at October 20, 2004 01:56 PM
Workshop organizer here. Never meant to step on so many toes, very sorry. Many of your points are well taken. We should have made it clear that this was meant A) as a beginner-level course for women, which is not to suggest that all women are at the beginner level, and B) that we specifically were focusing on blogs that expicitly discuss poltics. We weren't clear about that, and I can see how our lack of clarity has caused or underlined some negative assumptions about women and tech and the blogosphere that it was never our intention to reinforce. Quite the opposite.
This workshop grew out of our Women and Media conference which we held last year. At a session on Feminists in Cyberspace, which we had hoped would be a large, complex discussion of how cyberspace is and isn't different for feminists as a political medium, the participants kept bringing it back to blogs -- how can I start one? what program do you use? How do people find you? Etc. So we decided to offer a workshop that addressed those questions in much greater depth than could our panelists in a 2 hour panel which had a broader focus than just blogs and blogging.
Re: representation in the blogosphere, while it's true, according to the studies we've seen, that men and women blog at relatively equal rates, what they blog about varies widely. According to one NITLE study (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education), "56 percent of all 'personal' blogs are maintained by females, compared to 28 percent males. [I think the missing percentage is for folks whose gender couldn't be determined.] Amongst 'political' blogs, only 4 percent are maintained by females."
Now, the point about what's "personal" and what's "political" is well taken, and I'm going to give it a lot more thought and research. But we think it does matter who's on the top 100 lists. We think it absolutely does matter that women writing about politics have as wide an audience as men do. When they don't, not only are our perspecives and concerns are removed from the public policy-making loop, but our absence appears to confirm women’s lack of authority to speak about critical political issues.
Personally, I read a bunch of great female-written political blogs regularly, which is why I want to foster more of them, and gain them a wider audience. I would say our goal is less to make more Wonkettes, and more to make more Echidnes, and to help all the Echidnes out there reach a wider and wider audience.
Hope this helps. Again, your points are well taken about what was left out of our event description, and some of the assumptions that makes it seem like we've made. And about the personal/political thing. Glad to be reading you all.
Posted by: Jaclyn at October 20, 2004 02:37 PM
Jacklyn, I appreciate that you responded in one of our entries, I guess. I am not surprised you picked the Misbehaving one. What I would have expected.
I do agree with you, Jaclyn, that when men and women write about the same things, both should get equal respect and visibility. But what you're saying is that you want to bring more women in to become part of the political climate, because this is really what matters -- women making a political statement and difference. Cyberfeminism. That's okay, but it sure give a sadly confused message.
As for the NITLE study, are you talking about the one based on old data? Data from 2002-2003? First, let me reiterate -- old data. Second, what is the research based on? A subjective standard? Based on the fact that someone mentions their child from time to time? If this is so, then something like the weblog Feministe would be considered a 'personal' weblog rather than political, though Lauren writes about politics and feminism a good 95% of the time I would say. And Glenn Reynolds mentions his "instawife" and "instadaughter" from time to time -- I wonder why this doesn't impact on the perception of a weblog when men mention their families, but does when women do so.
So I take these studies with a grain of salt -- we're too biased and weblog writing is too subjective to be easily measured and classified.
More than that, though, is there's an implication with your workshop and your note here, that personal weblogs fly under your radar; the words hover in the air, unspoken though they are, that they, or I should say, 'we' aren't as important. We don't 'get the word' out.
When you say, "Personally, I read a bunch of great female-written political blogs regularly, which is why I want to foster more of them, and gain them a wider audience", you discount those of us who write about politics, but also technology, history, weather, family, life in the fast lane or not.
I can't speak for others, only myself. It's difficult enough being what I am--a woman who works with fairly hardcore, strongly male-dominated technology who gets dismissed too easily, at times, by the guys. Now I find myself dismissed equally, by the 'political female pundits' because I don't write exclusively about politics. I taint the environment.
It seems to me, you support the very thing you say you want to fight: The dismissal of women's writing.
Will you, in your workshop, caution the women never to mention their families, or they won't be taken seriously? To never write about anything but social issues and politics? That if they want to achieve power, they must divorce that part of themselves from their weblogs?
Sad. Very sad.
Posted by: Shelley at October 20, 2004 03:07 PM
Many, many thanks to Jaclyn for clarifying the context and intentions of the workshop.
Seems to me like she and New Words are setting out to educate people how to use technology to empower themselves, to encourage more activism, specifically feminism, on the web. And to that I say, Hallelujah! I applaud you.
Shelley - I see where you're coming from, but Jaclyn's on our side, and I think we should treat her that way.
Posted by: Gina at October 20, 2004 03:28 PM
Shelley-
I can only assume that your comments about being dismissed because you discuss family or personal concerns comes from experience. It hasn't been mine. I love Feministe, and I also love One Good Thing, which is a great blog written by a woman raising a family and running a small business which happens to be a sex toy shop. It's all first person and very "day-to-day" oriented, and I consider it a very political blog.
I assume you were being sarcastic, but just in case, I'll clarify that of course we won't be cautioning women not to write about their families. Or anything else they choose. And of course there are blogs written by women which aren't particularly concerned with politics. Those blogs aren't the specific focus of this workshop, but it doesn't mean that they don't have value. It just means that's not the focus of this one workshop. This particular workshop is happening as part of our project focused on increasing progressive women's voices in the media and public conversation about politics. We see blogging as a great way to do that.
Again, I'm assuming you've run up against all of these attitudes multiple times, which is why you're responding as you are. Thanks for sharing all of that -- it's helping to shape how we work with women bloggers in the future.
Posted by: Jaclyn at October 20, 2004 03:38 PM
No I wasn't being sarcastic. I really assumed that's what you would be teaching. After all, don't you want to increase Progressive Women's visibility among the political weblogging punditry?
I have to assume this, especially when I saw your comment in Misbehaving copied, verbatim, at David Weinberger's site.
Gina--what side? Why must there be a 'side'?
Never mind. Do me a favor Gina, don't write about my essays any more. Don't respond to anything I write. I don't fit in with 'your side', and all that happens is I come away feeling even more alienated.
Posted by: Shelley at October 20, 2004 04:05 PM
Shelley - i'm sorry that you see this split as arbitrary. I've been analyzing blog subgenres based on self-reporting, textual analysis and audience intention. I've been reading media's construction of blogging, which presumes many different practices, metaphorically connected to three primary offline practices: journalism, note-passing and journaling/diarying. There's a whole lot of subgenres that fit into none of those three and most people's blogs fit into multiple categories, which is why they will categorize their blog often separately from individual posts. The big difference is expected or desired audience. The NITLE numbers are completely consistent with my research this summer. The separation appears to be around audience. The intended audience size is significantly different between men and women, with women aiming for a much smaller, more intimate audience. I do not have published work to cite for you, so you can toss this away if you would like. But realize that your hatred of my attempts to recognize the emergent categories is just as subjective as your accusations. People are engaging in different practices, for different intentions, with different goals. I do not invalidate any of them, but want to understand how blogging fits into different people's lives. There's nothing homogenous about this technology adoption.
Blogging as a practice can provide many beneficial results for the individual, including cathartic processing and intellectual discourse. One value that it is showing for a certain class of people is as a tool of resistance, challenging mainstream political discourse. Currently, as the majority of users engaging in this process are male, there is a masculine resistance movement occurring. (Interestingly, this parallels all research on subcultures.) Masculine subcultural resistance movements tend to be class-driven first and foremost, while women in those movements tend to be resisting simultaneously class and gender oppression.
After her explanation, what i see Jaclyn's workshop as doing is recognizing the power of that resistance movement and recognizing its strong masculine voice. She's working to empower women to play a role in that movement by giving them the tools to fight fire with fire. She's not constraining her voices, she's just situating her fight. I strongly support her endeavors and feel as though women's voices do need to be heard in the highly publicized political blogging space. This means that women have to be engaged in the process of audience-seeking and that will have to be part of the lessons that they learn. Audience-seeking is not for everyone (regardless of gender). But this task is very different than simply teaching women how to blog. This is about teaching women how to challenging patriarchy.
Posted by: zephoria at October 20, 2004 04:09 PM
shelley: that wasn't the statement i was making, so nothing you concluded from it could be valid.
jaclyn: what you've described sounds wonderful, i hope you the best of success. will you be publishing the materials or notes online? perhaps in a blog form? :)
exchanges like this bring up one thing that i hope you'll consider adding to your workshop: dealing with gender-based attacks, even from other women. in all my years in tech it really seems that the more visibilty, contact and success women have in technical areas the more vicious the abuse becomes. i think if women are unprepared for this it can be powerfully discouraging.
Posted by: quinn at October 21, 2004 03:40 AM
But enough about politics. You're all invited over to my place for a look at the puppy pictures.
Posted by: fp at October 22, 2004 02:14 PM
Quinn, that was the way I read your statement. If you want to specifically say that anything that opens up technology to the non-technical, without regard to gender, I agree--this is a goodness.
But I do feel astonished that you see what I'm doing as a gender based attack, just because I felt this workshop begins with a very faulty premise, and helps to promote gender stereotypes.
Yes, helps to promote gender stereotypes.
Zephoria/Danah, you see weblogging as a subject of study, and unless you can show me that you're congizant of what's happening in all areas of weblogging, you can't make such definitive statements about this category or that.
And did I say I hated what you're doing? I said I disagree with it. I think your assumptions are faulty, your bias is hindering the clarity of your viewpoint and could lead to bias in your results. That's not hatred -- that's a pretty dispassionate view of your statements.
Your emotional attachment of that loaded term was unjustified, and bluntly a weapon to discredit me, what I'm saying and what I have said. If you apply the same emotionalism to your work, it can't be anything but flawed.
As for the workshop, I see this as nothing more as an attempt to breed a specific type of blogger in order to promote an agenda. And even the workshop presenter agrees, as it is based on how to promote cyberfeminism. I don't agree with teaching weblogging under such limitations, but I don't particularly care, either. However, when such broad and erroneous statements are made that perpetuate stereotypes, I will call it -- whether they arise from men, or even the strongest feminists.
The sad thing about this is too often women's voices are discredited or even dismissed by the female intellectuals and the feminists in weblogging. I used to call myself a feminist and have probably worked for this cause longer then most of you -- not knowing ages, I don't know for sure. But the type of feminist who is appearing in this thread is someone I find to be a bit of a snob.
Now, Danah, that was an emotional term, so feel free to derive hate from it if it gives you comfort.
Posted by: Shelley at October 22, 2004 03:44 PM
Not to be a spoilsport ... okay, to be a spoilsport... what the hell is there to teach? It takes five minutes to sign up for a LiveJournal, Blogger or Typepad account, and be up and running, and all you need is a very basic concept of how a computer and a web browser work. Hell, many of the blogs I read are from one of those services and use a base template.
They're still good, but it doesn't take a whole lot of tutoring to explain how to set up an account and get started.
What, exactly, is being taught? Color me a little confused.
Posted by: Astarte at October 25, 2004 03:21 AM