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Thursday
Mar182010

Margaret Wente asks "why are bloggers male?"

Last week, Margaret Wente from the Globe and Mail wrote an article about the nightmare gender gap in Canada. She concluded by saying:
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.
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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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterPaige

Well, I was about to say the same as you about the hand raising... and the being opinionated.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered Commentermamapoekie

I'm with you on the mansplaining...but seriously? Has she been on the internet lately? I couldn't agree with your post more.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterCate

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterBoston Mamas

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?

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterRebecca Leaman

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...

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterAndrea

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterOlivia

" 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

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterPaige

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!!!!

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterse7en

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterNotJustAnotherJen

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.)

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterArwyn

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterBon

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterKelly Rusk

Gah. Just, gah! I don't have good words. :(

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterAmber

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterMarcy

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered Commentermary

Honestly, it's Margaret Wente - I'm not surprised.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterLindsay

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterMandy

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.

March 18, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterKathy

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?

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterabbie

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)

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterChanna

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)

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterEmma

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):

I have been opinionated all of my life and have been sharing that opinion with the world on my blog for two years. I write about research, politics and societal issues surrounding parenting, mothering and feminism. I am one of the 2500 woman-written blogs that is part of the BlogHer network, which reaches more than 20 million people each month. According to a BlogHer, ivillage and Compass Partners survey conducted in June 2009, there were 79 million female Internet users in the United States and 10% of them (8 million) write their own blogs. I don't have comparative statistics for Canada, but from my experience, I expect it is very much the same. Women are blogging. Why aren't you reading them Margaret?

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterphdinparenting

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

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterLilia

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.

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterMarcy

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.

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterPaige

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.

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterReality Chick

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

March 19, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterphdinparenting

There are male bloggers?

March 20, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterladykay

[...] past week, with all the kerfuffle and brouhaha pinging back and forth between the blogosphere and mainstream media on the subject of mothers and bloggers and bears, oh my, i’ve realized [...]

Completely agree. Thanks for staying classy!

March 21, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterAndrea

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.

March 22, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterUpstatemomof3

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.

March 23, 2010 | Unregistered Commentercarol at A Second Cup

[...] (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, [...]

[...] One of my beefs with Kathryn’s editorial is that it was peppered with breastfeeding myths. If women believe the things that she believes, it is no wonder that so many of them choose not to breastfeed. She said that she “also wanted to give my boobs at least a chance to stay on my chest rather than dangling around on my stomach“, perpetuating the myth that breastfeeding makes your breasts sag (not true at all). She also questions whether some women who didn’t breastfeed did it because they “felt like getting tipsy once in awhile.”  If a breastfeeding mom really wants to get drunk once in a while, she should get a babysitter (because caring for your kids when you are tipsy is not a good idea whether you are breastfeeding or formula feeding) and pump and dump until the alcohol is out of her system (to maintain supply and avoid plugged ducts – pumping and dumping doesn’t remove the alcohol, only time does). Or if she just wants a drink or two here and there, she can do that safely while breastfeeding. A fact checker, even for editorials, is pretty important in my opinion (as I previously told Margaret Wente and the Globe and Mail). [...]

[...] Wente, whom I frequently disagree with, wrote an article called Motherhood: the new oppression. Although I do not feel oppressed (most [...]

[...] Obviously there have been some good online bitch-slapping sessions after this article, read Lisa Barone’s take on it or Annie Urban (a woman and a blogger.) [...]

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