Robin Lloyd at Scientific American has a great post up about one of my sessions at ScienceOnline2011 which was entitled “Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name.” I plan to write more about the panel and encourage you to go read her terrific coverage of our discussion:
Blogging and other Web activities have allowed members of many marginalized communities to open previously locked media doors. But women still rely more on back channels and ask for less help than men do in the digital realm..For instance, comments posted to The Intersection blog, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum (@Sheril_) and Chris Mooney (@ChrisMooney_), tend to come from men, Kirshenbaum said, but emails to the blog authors typically come from women or children.
“Culturally, as women, we are less likely to speak out or argue,” Kirshenbaum said, adding that women tend to create communities, and mentor and co-market one another behind the scenes, rather than in more public or traditional forums.
- And one of the most interesting moments -
A face-palm reaction rippled among the 20 or so mostly female attendees of the session when “Not exactly rocket science” blogger Ed Yong (@edyong209) said, “I suspect there is a bias in terms of what is pushed to me through Twitter.” He explained that, although other male writers often ask him to retweet links to their latest blog posts, not a single such request has ever come from a woman writer. Women in the room immediately broke into laughter, and commented about the novelty and presumptuousness to them of such a practice. Said Yong, “The fact that people haven’t done this speaks volumes.”
Her full post here.
January 18th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Thanks, Sheril! And it was so lovely to finally meet you in person. You did a great job, and I think all four of us meshed really nicely. It was a great experience.
January 18th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Games Magazine had a very interesting article in their December (I think) issue about why women don’t get very high in gender-integrated competition. It might inform this discussion.
January 18th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Yes, I watched that session online and chuckled at the collective Homer-Simpson “DOH!” from attendees when Ed made his comment…
January 18th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
I’m not sure I understand why Ed’s comment was viewed as facepalm worthy. After all, his point wasn’t about whether anybody SHOULD ask him to retweet, but about the relative number of people who DO make such requests. According to Ed’s comment on the Scientific American site:
“I was specifically talking about drawing posts to my attention via Direct Messages on Twitter. This, I think, cuts through some of the presumptuousness, because people can only do it if I follow them (and I’m pretty sure that at least half of the people I follow are women). So there’s already a certain collegiate relationship there, and it affords me some measure of control over who I extend this service to (i.e. people who I rate enough to follow). ”
And even if it were presumptuous of Ed to use his incoming retweet requests as a metric of anything, it is curious that apparently (according to Ed) men avail themselves of Ed’s tweeting and women do not.
And a metacommentary here. Does talking about Twitter always sound so weird when read from a pre-2005 perspective? “Ed’s tweeting”, “half the people I follow are women”, “writers often ask him to retweet”. Weird…
January 18th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Hi Sheril! I didn’t get a chance to speak with you this year at the conference, but I wanted to let you know my students who attended your session told me that they really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with them. I was surprised that no one at the conference commented on the fact that the four students of mine who are about to be big-time bloggers are all female! I’m so excited about the experience they are getting, but it’s also a big priority to keep them safe. I was thrilled for them to be able to attend your session at the conference. I hope the video gets published somewhere soon because I plan on showing it to my other two students who didn’t attend the conference. It’s great that they have someone like you who frequently delves into this topic to look up to and get advice from. Thanks again!
January 27th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
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