 When I recently republished my How to Save the World Reading List, several readers commented on how few (four out of eighty, to be precise, including Janine Benyus, pictured at right) women authors were represented. SBPoet
asked "what does this mean?" -- and I replied I wasn't sure. Don't
women have good ideas on how to save the world, or am I just not open
to them, or do they just not promote them as aggressively? No matter
which of these three it is, this is alarming: We can't afford not to be considering all the good ideas and perspectives on this subject.
So then I began looking at my other lists, to see whether this bias was present in them as well. Here's what I discovered:
Lists dominated (at least 70%) by male authors:
- My favourite business books
- My
blogroll, RSS subscriptions and hard-copy library of books on the
environment, politics, economics, health, education, technology &
knowledge management, innovation, entrepreneurship, science, arts,
culture, language, fiction novels, humour and 'self-help'
- Books I bought at the suggestion of readers
- Books sent to me free by publishers
- My favourite music written prior to 1970
- My favourite films
- My favourite editorials, essays, and speeches
Lists dominated by neither male nor female authors:
- My favourite music written 1970-1990
- My blogroll and RSS subscriptions of uncategorizable writing ("Artists and Dreamers")
Lists dominated (at least 70%) by female authors:
- My blogroll, RSS subscriptions and hard-copy library of books on poetry
- My favourite music written since 1990
I asked myself, and my readers, what to make of this:
I
just find that most of the books and articles on subjects I care about
seem to be written by men, though it is probably something of a cop-out
to blame the publishing industry. I think that, at the risk of
generalizing, men and women seem to express ideas in different ways and
hence may tend to find books written by their own gender easier to
understand and relate to (though I've discovered that women also tend
to favour male authors on many subjects, perhaps because most of the
available books on those subjects were written by men, and a majority
of blogs focused on these subjects are authored by men). Lakoff frames
meet Mars/Venus.
What do you think this means? Am I a chauvinist
without realizing it, or is the available, pertinent reading material
heavily skewed in favour of male points of view -- and if so, why is
that so, and what important and different points of view are we (all of us, male and female) missing as a result?
Rebecca Blood, a blogging pioneer who has long championed women's writing and blogs, writes:
I find that I read many more male bloggers than female. I favor the
link-driven blog, and, of the (comparatively) few practitioners that
exist, I wonder if they are mostly men? The ones I find - at least the
ones who are linking to things I'm interested in - have historically
mostly been male. I have been a devoted reader of several women's blogs
which have shut down for various reasons (one woman had a baby - go
figure).
I've found it hard to find women for the panels I've helped
organize, too. In each case, the panel was about the Web, or software,
and search as I would, it was hard to find women who were blogging on
the subject(s). I slogged through many a page of Google results with
little success. (On one such panel, I recruited a woman whose legal
name, as it turned out, was Dave.)
Recently, searching for panelists for another Web panel, I
started paging through A List Apart hoping to find woman writers. I
found one. I even looked through the Blogher Blogrolls and Speakers wiki and had no
luck finding women who specialized in the topic I was programming.
Now, you could accuse A List Apart of sexism, but knowing the
founder as I do, I think that unlikely. And of course unconscious bias
often exists in the most rational people (even me). But blogging is
self-publishing. Other's conscious or unconscious bias will affect
linking patterns, but not the publishing itself.
I know there are women working on every aspect of Web design
and programming. But I'm beginning to wonder if many women just don't
feel comfortable "tooting their own horns". A woman friend told me of
encouraging another woman to post something on her blog, to be told
"Oh, I don't have anything new to say about that." I quite honestly don't see very many male bloggers who exhibit that same reservation.
So, I don't think there's any shortage of smart, capable women doing things in the world, but for whatever reason (time, interest,
bias, self-effacement) they are harder for me to find online -- and
these days, that's where I look.
Take a look at this list
of suggested Mothers' Day books from two critics. The authors of the
books on the list are all women, but the subject matter of their books
doesn't fit neatly within the taxonomy of subjects that most bloggers
use -- many of the books are character-based novels or histories of
brave women from the past. The one notable exception, Writing to Change the World,
by Mary Pipher, is panned by a (male?) Kirkus critic as a "precious,
predictable, and unremarkable 'self-help' book", and another critic,
from Reed, says "she never met a cliché she didn't like". Amazon, which
doesn't provide a 'see inside' for the book, suggests you pair it up
with (or might prefer) Christina Baldwin's Storycatcher,
another book that "shows the power of story to connect life experiences
so that we can share them, learn from them, and teach each other."
Sounds promising, but I've already read and reviewed two excellent
books on similar subjects, Thomas King's The Truth About Stories and Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird.
Why does the King's book make my How to Save the World reading list and
not Lamott's? Because King asserts specifically that stories can and do
change the world; it's more 'political'. Which is the better book? Depends on what you're looking for. My male bias raises its ugly head again.
Or contrast two other books I love and have recently reviewed, with very similar messages: John Gray's Straw Dogs and Melissa Holbrook Pierson's The Place You Love is Gone.
Gray is a philosopher, while Pierson is a storyteller, and the way they
present this message is utterly different. I've given away a dozen
copies of Straw Dogs. Will I be as generous with Pierson's book? Probably not. Is that just because Straw Dogs made the point first? Probably not. I found Gray's book shattering, worldview-changing. It just resonated with me at a time I was ready for, and looking for, the message his book makes, the way he made it.
Or consider the popularity of Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers compared to Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe,
two new books on global warming released almost at the same time.
Flannery's book is around #400 in Amazon rank in the US (#10 in
Canada). Kolbert's is around #900 in Amazon rank in the US (#236 in
Canada). Flannery, a scientist, takes a scientific approach to the
subject, with lots of data and theory. Kolbert, a journalist, tells
"the story behind the headlines", using interviews with scientists and
people living with the effects of global warming now. I bought them
both as soon as they came out, they both have similar messages, and
they're both very well written and compelling. But guess which one I
liked better?
Women read more than men, and their fiction
reading subsidizes and essentially allows most non-fiction
(predominantly written by men) to be published. In a comparison of
reading habits, the Guardian suggested that women get more "guidance"
from reading fiction than men, who get less involved in novels, which
they read primarily for "excitement". The UK Women's Library has a
website called What Women Want,
with, perhaps tellingly, these subpage headings: Pleasure, a Voice,
Beauty, a Home Life, Security, Independence, Equality. Modest
expectations, pragmatic dreams. An honest, comparable list for men
would be more ambitious, idealistic, ideological, abstract. Our reading reflects our dreams.
Like
most men 20-60, and unlike most women of any age, I now read a lot more
non-fiction than fiction. That alone tilts my attention towards male
authors and bloggers. But I confess (to my surprise: until I actually
went through my library I didn't realize it) that of the fiction
(excluding poetry) I read, 75% of it is also
written by men. I don't read typical "men's fiction" (I once tried
reading a Dan Brown book and found the writing so lame I gave up after
ten pages). My favourite writer, as regular readers know, is Frederick
Barthelme, but for every Margaret Atwood on my shelves there are three
John Updikes, Charles Baxters or Nick Hornbys. I don't know why. Their characters think like I think. I see and feel myself in their characters the way I rarely connect with the characters of women novelists.
When
it comes to music and film, I think we have the big mostly-male
'entertainment media' companies to blame for the continuing dominance
of men in these areas of writing. I can't stomach awards shows that
lavish prizes, money and recognition on no-talent actors who merely
mouth (usually badly) the lines they are given, while the writers are
ignored. No wonder 99% of the ever-diminishing output from the
Hollywood oligopoly is such crap. As these data
show, women are outnumbered more than 8-1 in production and writing of
major theatrical releases. The data for TV aren't much better. We
desperately need a new indy film industry run by women to do for film
what Lilith Fair and similar projects have done for music. And we also
need to get rid of the old boys' club of film critics: Film critics are
overwhelmingly male, clearly biased against the work of women
filmmakers, and absolutely obsequious when reviewing (are they getting
kickbacks for this?) the pathetic testosterone-crazed products of
today's Hollywood producers.
Because of women's initiatives, the
situation is changing in music: Women artists gave up on the
male-dominated music oligopoly twenty years ago, and just started
producing their own stuff. It's now vastly better than the mainstream
music fare. But it's still an uphill struggle against the machine, with
radio stations and music TV stations still offering predominantly
no-talent formulaic male bands (and don't even get me started on the
nauseating American Idol pap, where singers don't even have to write
their own compositions). It fascinates me that on the video programs
where you 'vote' for the next video to be played, the music of women
singer-songwriters consistently beats its male competition. When will the 'industry' catch on?
So
I think we are seeing, and will continue to see, a gradual increase in
equity, attention and market share for women in all endeavours that
stem from creative writing.
While men may still prefer creative works written by men, I think women
will balance those prejudices, and opportunities for male and female creative writers will ultimately be equal.
When it comes to non-fiction
however (and I include non-fiction books, blogs and documentary films
in this category) I don't think we can blame an existing and
unresponsive power structure for the inequality, and I suspect this
inequality will continue, sustained by several very human, cultural
factors:
- Men are generally more arrogant about what they know and more aggressive at self-promoting.
- Men
are, I think, better 'weak ties' networkers -- willing and able to draw
attention to themselves by getting A-listers they don't 'know' well
(mostly men -- this cycle is self-perpetuating) to 'link' to them.
- Men
seem more inclined to see, and seek, 'engineering answers' to problems
(even though they have repeatedly been shown to be idealistic and not
to work), while women seem more inclined to proffer more pragmatic,
adaptive answers. But many women want
to believe in the grander, idealistic 'we can change the world'
answers, which is why they may be more inclined to read male writers
than men are to read women writers.
- Men seem more likely to see
'universal' patterns and solutions -- one size fits all -- whereas
women tend to be more down-to-earth and realize that most human issues
are complex and that patterns and solutions are situational. Hence, they are more inclined to use stories to explain the context for the observations and recommendations, in women's writing, which few men seem to have the patience for.
- Women
seem to have a better understanding of the limitations of language: You
know more than you can tell, and you can tell more than you can write
down, as Dave Snowden has explained. These limitations mitigate against
the effectiveness of writing and in favour of oral conversation and
demonstration as means of expressing ideas, communicating, learning and
explaining. In my experience women are usually better
conversationalists (they listen better, for a start) and better at
demonstrating one-on-one how to do things (they tend to be more
patient, which helps). They are probably also inherently better 'unconferencers'
for the same reasons. Men don't appreciate the limitations of writing
as much, so they are prone to over-rely on writing and formal
one-to-many presentations to teach and learn.
- There is some
evidence that our languages themselves, evolved over several millennia
that were largely male-power-dominated, might be better designed to
communicate male-perspective ideas than female-perspective ideas. A
language written by women would be, I think, more nuanced in semantics,
richer in observational vocabulary and less simplistic in
cause-and-effect syntax. So I think to some extent women could be
justified in 'blaming the tools' for the lack of attention their
writing gets.
So I guess I'm acknowledging my prejudices, and
not making excuses for my male-dominated library or blogroll. Blame it
on my idealism, my short attention span and my frames, rather than on
misogyny, however. And I much prefer women teachers/coaches, and
conversations with women, at least when I'm paying attention, which I'm
at least getting better at.
If we're really going to save the world, it will probably be women, self-organizing, grassroots, self-improving, talking with each other, patiently, thanklessly, providing context for what needs to be done and hence developing local, practical action ideas by consensus, that will make it happen. Meanwhile most of us men will still be talking at
each other, competing and jockeying for attention, writing broad,
clever, sometimes best-selling diagnoses and prescriptions -- that
don't work and don't tell you what you need to do in the real world.
We are who we are. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
