I haven’t followed the mini blog swarm surrounding feminist writer Susan Estrich and her whining about the paucity of women opinion writers on op-ed pages. Today I was more or less forced to read about it as “research” for this post. The Anchoress blogged it last week, so read her post (and here). James Joyner also weighs in.
What I want to say has less to do with Estrich and more to do with Kevin Drum of Political Animal. He writes:
Not to get too obsessed by the whole Estrich-Kinsley thing, but so far no one has attempted any kind of real answer to Estrich’s question: why are op-ed pages so completely dominated by men?
….For starters, it doesn’t appear to be primarily the fault of journalistic gatekeepers, as it is in some other professions. The New York Times has a female editorial page editor, and so did the LA Times until Kinsely took over. That didn’t stop their op-ed pages from being heavily male dominated. What’s more, the news pages of major newspapers have plenty of female reporters.
The political blogosphere provides another clue. Although its geeky Usenet roots were (and are) testosterone laden affairs, there are still no formal barriers to entry here, no old boys club in the usual meaning of the word. Yet if you take a look at the Blogosphere Ecosystem, which for all its faults is probably the closest thing we have to a consensus measure of popularity for political blogs, you will find exactly two women in the top 30: Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber. (There are a few group blogs in the top 30, but those are very heavily male dominated too.)
So what’s up? There aren’t any institutional barriers in the traditional sense of the word, which means either (a) there are fewer female political bloggers and thus fewer in the top 30, or (b) there are plenty of women who blog about politics but they don’t get a lot of traffic or links….My guess is that it’s a bit of both…
So what is ironic about Kevin Drum?
That he guesses visitor traffic (or the lack of it) could be a factor in why women bloggers don’t get a lot of attention when it comes to political blogging, yet he, running a high-traffic blog, doesn’t link to mine, the blog of a relatively low-traffic political woman blogger!
I thought you might find that interesting.
Update: Betsy Newmark notes the “bad blogetiquette,” but adds, “It’s the content that matters, not the chromosomes.”
I agree.
Update II: Kevin Drum, good sport that he is, updated his post and linked to the blog.
Jimmie Bise: “I suspect that women are less inclined than men to grab a megaphone and shout their opinions to the rest of the world. That may be because of nature, it may be because of nurture, or it may be, as I suspect, a combination of both.”
Update III (2/21): A conservative and a liberal blogger, both men, will talk about political blogging this morning on C-SPAN. I wonder if they asked any women to come on the show? Perhaps they did but the woman/women couldn’t make it, so they went to the next two bloggers on the list. You think so? I don’t, either. Nobody even thinks of asking women bloggers to come on TV or radio to talk about political blogging, at least not this woman.
I’m going to see what I can do to change that.
