Did you know about the BlogHer '07 conference that brought together 800 media savvy female bloggers and journalists last weekend? If you did, you're probably in the minority, because I can't remember it hitting the news. There was zero mention in the UK that I saw, and a notable silence from the many US news sites that live in the depths of my RSS feed. This silence was noted by CNET's Amy Tiemann, who has written an eloquent article asking why the media is still sticking its fingers in its ears when women speak.
For a long time I avoided female-only gatherings, reasoning that bloggers should be bloggers and not "male bloggers" or "female bloggers". Surely by separating ourselves we're only causing more reason for the petty and the small-minded to discriminate and to dismiss. And yet when the media at large fails to even cover an event just because it's focussed on the feminine, that really does suggest that there's an awfully long way to go.
I won't begin to suggest that blogging by and for women ought to be read just by virtue of what it is. That's ridiculous. But there are some issues that affect women differently or more than men, and just as men have a recognised outlet for this, women as a whole need to gain the attention and respect of the mass media.
Also cited by Amy Tiemann was this article by Jennifer Pozner, who laments the lack of reasonable levels of reportage covering events like BlogHer '07. Pozner complains that:
If many believe that blogging is a primarily male sport, it is partially because old-school gender disparities in resource allocation, power and popularity long entrenched in traditional news media are replicating themselves online. In the blogosphere, young men—mostly white and mostly economically comfortable—link to, write about, promote and fund their buddies’ blogs; and corporate media play star-makers, quoting, profiling and featuring the punditry of this New Boys Network. As is hardly surprising to those of us who monitor media representations of women, women who blog (especially those who write about feminist issues) are off the radar.
There is almost certainly some truth in this, although hopefully with companies such as this one, where there is a majority of women, the tide is beginning to turn. Do we sometimes shoot ourselves in the foot, too, by spending too much time linking backwards and forwards between other "women's" sites? Are we failing to break out of our constraints? Fifty percent of bloggers are women, and I find it hard to believe both that the majority of those sites are kitschy cutesy crap or that it's not possible to enjoy that element of sugary nonsense and also have an intelligent, informed point of view. Events like BlogHer are very important because they join voices together, and the more of these events that happen, the more the media will be forced to cover them or risk looking behind the times. PR for these events needs to be upscaled and broadened, and second and third wave feminists need to spend less time picking at each other, the way Cate observed, and more time celebrating the similarities and using them to drive women's issues to the fore.
Women are still, according to some estimates, 78 years away from closing the pay gap. Yet there has been a UK Prime Minister, and next year there might be the first female President of the United States. The voices are clearly talking, but only a select few are getting the right to be heard. Now all that's left is to ask ourselves what we can do to address that. If you're out there and you have something to say but you're worried you won't be heard then please join the chorus. The louder it gets, the less possible it is to ignore.
Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. She's trying to get her voice in tune.
