Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Friday, March 18, 2005

Estrogen Month - Day 18

[Thanks again for your patience while I work through a ton of data-entry job stuff, much of which I took home with me for the weekend. Blogging will continue to be light for the foreseeable future, as I'm too exhausted to sit much at the computer. To see the full story behind Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month go here.]

Even though I'm way behind in blog-reading due to my recent workload, I've yet to see many men besides The Heretik participating in Estrogen Month. Certainly none of the so-called "A-list bloggers" has taken what I'm calling the Pen-Elayne Pledge during the month of March, the promise to link to and discuss at least one new-to-him female blogger each week. What good is Women in Blogging month if 99% of the folks participating in it are women?

Okay yeah, I know, it does some good, we build up our own gender-based community as a bulwark against institutionalized sexism and strengthen our own knowledge base and find great new writers to read. But that's still just half the blogging population (perhaps even less if you talk about liberal-left political bloggers, although since all the ranking systems are self-selecting I'm not sure there's any sort of reliable measure to count how many of us there are out there). If the "where are the women bloggers?" problem starts with the guys, and it almost always does, why is the accompanying solution not being taken up by the guys?

For more discussion on this from, yes, the female part of the liberal political blogosphere, see:

Anne Zook (scroll down a bit)

Astarte

Barbara O'Brien

Carla

Elise

eRobin Stelly

Ginger Mayerson

Jeanne d'Orleans

Lauren

Morgaine (read through the first half-dozen)

Pam Spaulding

Rivka

Roxanne Cooper

S.L. Zoll

Shakespeare's Sister

Trish Wilson

Hey, given that I've spent so many posts this month talking about new-to-me bloggers, it's about time I give some of the gals on my actual sidebar a shout-out. :) Although I'd also recommend Sheelzebub for just the right topping on this particular cake.

And now that I've been through the female side of my News+Views blogroll, I see I need to amend my second paragraph. Although he doesn't say anything about the Pen-Elayne Pledge, Atrios referenced Shakespeare's Sister and Lindsay Beyerstein today. Lindsay is currently on the multiple-vote Gals in Waiting list with 3, and of course Shakespeare's Sister was the first high-vote-getter of Estrogen Month, being added to my sidebar/daily reading list on Day 6. Well, today Shakespeare's Sister announced that she and Pam Spaulding (who was added on Day 13) have banded together to form Big Brass Blog, which also includes three other multiple-vote Gals in Waiting, so I needed no prompting to add that group blog to my sidebar/daily reading. Looks like we have some excellent blog-reading days ahead of us, folks!

Lastly, Natalie Davis reminds us that this weekend she'll be blogging from Cambridge as she participates in the Women and the Media conference. It would shock me if the center focus isn't the "where are the women in political opinion writing?" question so hot in the blogosphere of late.

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