Why are Women Not Blogging Politics?
Today on Twitter, GreenJ, one of the Crikey writers asked “serious question: why don’t women (proportionally the unbalance is weird) subscribe to crikey?” This question was retweeted by Pollytics who took the issue up on his (her?) blog, asking “where are Australia’s female political bloggers?” [oops, just burnt the soup because I’m trying to blog while cooking tea] Some of the people who left comments, especially JaneShaw, Anna Winter, and BH, made similar points to those that I had made on Twitter, but I’m going to repeat them here anyway. And I will admit at the outset that what I am about to say does not apply to all women, any more than what I may say or imply about men does not apply to all men, but it does apply to large numbers of us. I also acknowledge that there are many women who do blog and do cover politics, as the responses to Pollytics’ posting showed, but for the moment, let’s put that aspect aside.
Time is a major factor. Why aren’t we reading Crikey and blogging? Because women are still carrying the major load in terms of housework and the relational work required to keep a household running these days. Much of this work isn’t recognised and is so piecemeal that it chews up hours without you having anything to show for it:
Because we’re reading the school newsletter over breakfast and trying to make sure that the kids have their permission slips and money for school excursions as we try to get out the door to go to work. Because we use our morning tea or lunch breaks to pay bills or make dental appointments (or ensure that others remember to). Because when we get home we’re cooking and making lunches and ironing uniforms and helping with homework and paying bills online and reading “fine print” on contracts and reading the local freebie paper because, even though it is frequently appalling journalism, at least it tells you which local roads are closed and when services are closing and when to put your rubbish on the kerb. We’re co-ordinating the family’s activities and making sure everyone gets where they have to be on time and trying to keep all of this in our heads.
Because when we finally collapse at the weekend we’re making sure that the washing is done and our parents are still alive and our in-laws know that we haven’t forgotten them and the neighbours still know we exist. We’re organising food and get-togethers because “we never see our friends any more.” We’re arranging holidays and weekends away because “we really need a break.”
Many older men just haven’t been socialised to pay attention to these sorts of things. For the most part, it is not deliberate neglect of maliciousness; most older women have been socialised into it. Maybe the younger generations will be different.
Because we’re already doing politics. Many women, and men, are involved in their communities. The difference for women is that they are usually doing it on top of everything I’ve just said above. Much of this goes under the radar and is not considered to be “politics”:
We’re working on parents committees and progress associations and community groups. We’re working on stalls and at working bees. And yes, this is politics. Many of these activities involve meeting the local members and trying to influence them to get much needed facilities for a school or community. When your school doesn’t have enough classrooms, or your eight year old can’t get help with reading because there aren’t enough teacher aids, or you can’t get to the local shops safely because there is no footpath, that is a result of political decisions (or indecision) and it takes political action to get it fixed.
This type of local politics, frustrating though it is, often achieves results. The politics of much media and Canberra often leaves those outside the circles of power feeling that they have no ability to affect anything.
So, how do we get women involved in political blogging? First: Maybe the question we should be asking is not “how do we get women more involved in politics or political blogging?” but “how do we free women up to do more of what they choose to do?” For some, that will be more involvement in conventional politics or blogging, for others it won’t. Second: Let’s recognise the breadth of political interest, involvement, and action and give credit where it’s due.
[Haven’t got the toast ready to go with the soup because I’ve been blogging. But I am one of the lucky ones who does get help with this some of this stuff and I have had the last two nights off cooking duty. Sharing too much? – the personal is still political.]
UPDATE: I have been personally attacked over on Pollytics’s blog for this post. I will respond to some of the issues raised by that criticism here as soon as I get the chance, but just at present I really need to give priority to an article and some other stuff that I’m writing for publication. So, watch this space!
Your Comments
Catriona writes:
Lisa, I think you’re implying (if not asking outright) a third question in that second-last paragraph: if we say women aren’t involved in political blogging, maybe we need to think about how we define the term “political blogging”? Maybe we’re defining it too narrowly.
(And I say that as a woman who is also extremely fortunate in how much of the basic running of the household her partner is willing to undertake.)
Posted: 19 08 2009 - 22:23 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
“We’re working on parents committees and progress associations and community groups. We’re working on stalls and at working bees. And yes, this is politics”
This is so spot on. The legitimation crisis of formal politics in the West seems to me to stem from a carefully cultivated distaste for political processes – we see confected contempt for politicians everywhere in the media. And part of how that gets naturalised is through the idea that only institutions can do politics. What people do in their normal lives is, apparently, something else.
As Catriona says, we define political blogging too narrowly and it’s precisely in the realm of blogging, in that it mixes social, narrative, and newsgathering modes of communication, where I think we can productively re-establish the connections between institutional and personal politics.
Huh, got a bit blog-triumphalist there. So be it.
Posted: 19 08 2009 - 22:42 | Permanent link to this comment
dogpossum writes:
I think I have to marry you, Lisa. Yo is teh fushiz. Mos def.
Posted: 19 08 2009 - 23:09 | Permanent link to this comment
Jane Shaw writes:
Couldn’t agree more with all of the above, and, in fact, I’m starting to get a little annoyed by all the claims that women are not involved in politics based on the fact that men are disproportionately represented in Crikey subscriptions and comments on the main political websites.
Swapping badly crafted insults on the comments section, or even subscribing to a political website is not the sole means of measuring women’s interest in, or contributions to, political debate.
Most women I know are well informed and astute in their understanding of politics, but they choose to expend their efforts where it will have the most effect – face to face discussions with other people and activities in their local communities.
Perhaps the next question should be are men getting involved at this level, and if not, why not?
Posted: 19 08 2009 - 23:16 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Catriona, I think you’re right about the definition of political blogging also being too narrow. This blog, for instance, although we call it a cultural studies blog, still deals with political issues from time to time. They are usually tagged as such, but are rarely about dealings in Canberra or political polls.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 07:23 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Jane, I can’t remember precisely where it was, but somewhere the other day I heard a call for more men to start getting more involved in those voluntary activities of which women carry the lion’s share. This is encouraging because it indicates that the problem is starting to be recognised as such and that is the first step towards making change.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 07:28 | Permanent link to this comment
Helen writes:
Great post! As a political blogger (although if you look at the posts currently at the top of my page, you’d think not), I have literally started burning things because of doing blog-check and moderation while cooking dinner. And I used to be a pretty good cook!
I agree with the many people who say that the narrow def of politics which people often apply to mean “political blogging / action / writing” is a huge part of the problem.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 10:07 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Helen, I can readily see the politics in your posts – things of great relevance to the power structures governing everyday life.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 10:23 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
The more I think about it, the more I think there’s a problem with this debate not just in how we define writing politics (or political blogging) but in how we define reading politics.
As Jane points out above, you can’t just look at comments threads and subscriptions. Those are only some physical markers of active reading.
Book-history theorists for forty years and more have been emphasising how difficult it is—even impossible, in some senses—to resurrect the reading experience of the common reader.
Just because the common reader is now leaving more physical markers behind, just because the reading of digital texts is more noticeably dialogic and interactive than the reading of texts such as newspapers, periodicals, or books—it doesn’t follow that those markers are a true, accurate, and complete representation of reading experience or degree of involvement.
It’s like saying that women didn’t do politics in the eighteenth century because they didn’t hang around the coffee houses.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 12:41 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
“It’s like saying that women didn’t do politics in the eighteenth century because they didn’t hang around the coffee houses.”
That is a fabulous metaphor!
Exactly what is going on here: like women’s, or working-class, writing in relation to the canon, it is invisible to the structures of power that cannot see their own privilege in the construction of a one-sided reality.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 15:08 | Permanent link to this comment
WildlyParenthetical writes:
That’s exactly it, John. And they tend to be rather aggressive/dismissive in the maintenance of that privilege, and their construction of reality (see Venise’s description of Lisa’s piece at Pollytics). And thanks, Lisa, for a great, POLITICAL piece!
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 18:44 | Permanent link to this comment
austin writes:
I read somewhere once that there had been a study done which found that, in the work place, when a woman get’s angy she’s generally perceived as having “lost control” where as when a man gets angry he’s perceived as “taking control”. I would be this bias extends outside the work place (in my expirience it does). Perhaps women have internalised this to an extent and shy away from taking a stand on issues (which is a big chunk of what bloggers do) because they feel they will simply look like they’re having a whine, whereas guys feel it will make them look like they have interesting and passionate opinions.
I think this might be even more of a factor than the housework/child rearing/community involvement element you’ve raised as of the bloggers i know which are around my age (25) and younger almost all are men.
There is not that much more housework for a single childless female uni student or young professional living in a share house than her male equivalent.
Especially not if she’s sharing with other women.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 20:09 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Thank you WildlyParenthetical. I was a little disappointed that Crikey only quoted half of the post because one of the major points that people have been making is that many women are engaged in political activity, just that it is frequently not recognised as such. I was talking to a young man this evening who pointed out that it is not really in the interests of those whose bread and butter is dependent on political commentary as generally defined to broaden the definition as this is likely to dilute their expertise – an interesting point that I’m still chewing over.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 20:58 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Thanks Austin. I was quite flattered by the implicit suggestion by one commenter on Crikey that I might be a hormonal younger woman. It is a very long time since anyone referred to me as a younger woman. I do take your point though, and am sure that this still goes on in some places.
Is it possible that whenever a woman starts discussing the lived tension of conflicting roles using everyday experience and everyday language, that she will be interpreted as whining and not as taking a stand? I could have laid my post out in academic language backed by references, as I have done elsewhere on a similar topic. I doubt that would have struck such a chord though.
I don’t know whether what you note has been internalised and is a factor in some women not blogging. It is not something that I have a problem with, though I am quite prepared to accept your point that it might be quite an issue in some cases.
I also know that as well as gender issues, what we are talking about is immensely affected by issues of age and class. Anecdotal evidence would have it that many younger women have not been socialised into attending to all the of minutiae and relational work that I talk about and such things may not present a barrier to many of them. Increasingly, however, research is showing that relationship maintenance and networking is very important to younger people, and younger women especially spend a lot of time on this.
Posted: 20 08 2009 - 21:48 | Permanent link to this comment
dogpossum writes:
The more I think about this issue, the more it bothers me. I think I’d like to dispute the premise of the question. Actually, as CJ points out on the West Wing, you’re lost once you’ve accepted the premise of the question.
The premise(s) here, are – to me: a) that all women are alike; b) that ‘politics’ equates to the mechanics of elections and government; and c) that blogging = formal blog posts and the formal turn-taking of comments.
I don’t like it that we’re left (as women participating in public discourse) defending a) why we don’t post on particular blogs; b) why/if we choose to read/listen rather than write/speak in comments blogs, c) justifying particular modes of engagement and issues as political.
It feels as though in participating in this debate we’re accepting the premise of the question. The question is of course ‘why aren’t more women blogging politics?’ To me it seems a nonsensical statement. Rather than answering, I think I’d like to respond with another question: “What are _women doing online?” and then to actually go and read what women have written and to see how they participate in online discussions, paying particular attention to the resounding silences: when are choosing not to comment or not to engage? Why might they choose facebook over their own blog? Why post a photo of their child on facebook than write a lengthy post about the Labour party? What does this posting of pictures tell us _without words?
Though I’m more than capable of it, I personally don’t feel the need to write about party politics, elections, the architecture of government etc etc etc; this is the sort of conventionally male dominated discourse that I find utterly boring for the most part. This is not the only place where important life-affecting matters are conducted. I’m far more interested in how interpersonal politics and intra-community discourse is conducted in other spaces. I think this is why I’m so interested in African American vernacular dance. I am interested in the idea of dance as public discourse and politics, and one of the things I like most about it is that words – language, writing, arguing, speaking – are utterly value-less in this setting. Here, it is a politics of the body, of communicating emotion and ideas and relationships without words that are most important.
So I am not playing. I am not accepting the premise of the question.
Posted: 21 08 2009 - 13:16 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Thank you, dogpossum. Beautifully communicated.
Posted: 21 08 2009 - 13:31 | Permanent link to this comment
Andra writes:
that was just beautiful. why don’t more men recognise political blogging when they see it!
Posted: 21 08 2009 - 21:41 | Permanent link to this comment
Helen writes:
Gah! I hadn’t paid much attention to Crikey blogs up to now – that Venise person really is a piece of work! The stupid, it burns!
Posted: 3 09 2009 - 10:01 | Permanent link to this comment