From Your Non-Existent Correspondent

There was an article in the Independent on Thursday called There's A Good Reason Women Don't Write Blogs, written by columnist Mary Dejevsky.

The Indy wants you to pay a pound for the privilege of reading this ill-informed tosh, but I've done that for you, and have pasted the full article below. I've also highlighted some choice bits in bold.

I could do a nice Fisking job on this, but that would make a very long post, and we'll see if that happens in the comments.

But I would like ask to the following questions:

1. Where does Mary Dejevsky get the idea from that 'except in areas such as childcare and gynaecology, it is across the board that women bloggers are few and far between?' She has no statistics to back up this assertion*.

2. Is Mary Dejevsky aware of the hypocrisy of using an opinion column in a national newspaper to claim that women are 'too bashful' to voice their own opinions?

3. Or is she inviting us non-existent female bloggers to be inspired by her example, as an 'opinionated [woman] expressing forthright views in [...] the media'?

4. If we're to be inspired by columnists like Mary Dejevsky into writing a blog, why then does she say that blogging is a passing fad that is attractive to men because of its 'gadgetry and self-aggrandisement'?

5. How does she square her point that most women are too busy looking after their children and cooking dinner for their husbands to blog, with the fact that she's said that most female bloggers are writing about 'childcare and gynaecology'?

Should you be moved to thank Mary Dejevsky for bravely speaking out on behalf of the nation's timid, downtrodden legions of 50s-style mothers and wives, her email address is m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk.

Enjoy. And thanks to Sean for alerting me to this article.

Mary Dejevsky: There's a good reason why women don't write blogs

Men seem to take it for granted that they've something to say and that the rest of us want to hear it

Published: 29 June 2006

Iain Dale is a Conservative pro-Cameron MP. I do not know him, and I am just as certain that he does not know me. He does, though, put himself about. He writes one of the more prolific blogs (www.iaindale.blogspot.com**) to come out of this Parliament, purveying commentary, analysis, gossip and the like via his website, with what seems like hour-to-hour, if not minute-by-minute, frequency.

Iain - as I am sure he would like me (and you) - to call him, recently made an observation that simply leapt out of his stream of consciousness. "It doesn't matter whether you're talking about Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem bloggers," he wrote, "you won't find many written by women." He went on to observe, admitting the sexist stereotype, that women, "being much better gossips than men ought to be ideally suited to the world of blogging". I curtail his prolixity, but he concludes: "There must be some reason why women don't blog as much as men in the political sector."

Well, Iain, I venture to correct you on one point. It is not just in the political sector, as you call it, that fewer women blog. Except in areas such as childcare and gynaecology, it is across the board that women bloggers are few and far between. And it does not take a huge of the imagination to suggest at least two reasons why.

The first is that, for all the efforts to educate men and women equally, to encourage them to compete for honours, even to feminise the examination system by introducing coursework, women (still) tend to be more bashful than men about what they think. It is not that, as veteran male gender-warriors might growl, we have much to be bashful about. It is rather that we tend to be less confident than men that the rest of the world wants the benefit of our opinion.

Men seem to take it for granted not only that they have something to say, but that the rest of us should find it worth hearing - or, in the case of the blogosphere, reading. Iain Dale is not the only verbal incontinent who ploughs on, apparently regardless of who might be listening or reading. Alas, his confidence is repaid by the dozens who seem to respond to every post. The cacophony of so many (mostly male) opinions is deafening.

Our female bashfulness, I submit, may be gradually being drummed out of us by a combination of good teaching, co-ed schools and colleges, and the example of opinionated women expressing forthright views in other parts of politics and the media. The second reason why women don't blog, however, is more serious, because it is more intractable: women simply do not have the time.

Earlier this week, I heard Finland's minister for foreign trade and development, speaking in London to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage in Finland. They were the first women in Europe to gain the vote. And the record of women's participation in Finnish life is as laudable as one would expect from Scandinavia.

Yet, as Ms Paula Lehtomaki noted, without the diffidence that might attend the same observation in this country, the next frontier had to be the home. Women had come a long way: safeguards against discrimination, for equal pay and opportunities were all in place and largely observed. But the fact was that in joining the workforce on equal terms, women were all too often tied to two jobs: equality, even in enlightened Scandinavia, all too often stops at the front door.

How many homes are there - here, or in tech-savvy Finland - where the man will think it quite excusable to shuffle in late for dinner because he has been reading or writing his online diary, but would greet with ridicule or fury the prospect of dinner being late (or non-existent) because his partner had been delayed in the blogosphere?

And for dinner, we can substitute baby's bathtime, the children's high-tea, the regular taxi-service families run between sports and after-school clubs, the elderly parents that need looking after. It is this old-fashioned, and persistent, division of responsibilities that frees men to indulge in the time-consuming fashion of the day; and the gadgetry and self-aggrandisement involved in blogging only make it that much more attractive.

Iain Dale calls his blog "Iain Dale's diary". Those of us of a certain age - I can faintly recall the signature tune - know this to be an allusion to the fictitious radio diary of a GP's wife and receptionist which was broadcast on weekday afternoons. It was a soap opera for its day, very BBC Home Service. More tied to the Fifties way of life than The Archers, it did not survive into this more hurried, less homely age.

But there is a point here. In the days of Fifties-style, essentially segregated working, Mrs Dale had the time to keep a diary. Today's Mrs Dale would be the doctor herself, rushing in to the surgery from the school run and organised enough to assemble dinner at the end of the day. She would be too tired at the end of it all, or have more pressing things to do, to advertise her thoughts in the blogosphere. Diary-keeping, unlike family responsibility, has entered the public sphere and crossed the gender-divide.

* I have no statistics to refute it, but it's not borne out in my experience, and I'm sure that Pash, Tabby Rabbit, Scroobious, Lizzy, Extemporanea, Annie, Belladona, Betty, Great She, Smat, Spinny, Ori, Taiga, Arabella, First Nations, Biscuits, Surly Girl, Catpee and Urban Chick would agree. And that's just from my blogroll.

** Who, as Prolix points out, has himself fisked Mary's article here.


tags: mary dejevsky | misogyny