Presidential campaign illustrates my point
Recent-ish comments by Steve Pierson at the handmirror about the low level of female participation in the comments threads at the standard prompted me to reflect again on the issue of gendered space on the net. I was also interested to read an op-ed piece in Truthout about how having a female presidential candidate has increased female participation in the American democratic process.

And even though it shouldn't be necessary, exemplars can cause wider shifts in thinking about who does what. In the case of Clinton, seeing her taken seriously as a political contender (even despite the sexism of a good chunk of the political commentary surrounding her) suddenly means that the two main political parties in America can now sanction female candidates as likely to capture the vote in a way they were too conservative to do before. Male candidates were safe choices - now they're one of a growing plurality of choices.
Peer support is also hugely significant: New Zealand's first female registered doctor, Margaret Cruickshank was a twin who studied throughout her school life with her sister (a double masters graduate) and best friends with the first female medical graduate Emily Siedeberg. Suffragettes around the world worked together to get the vote. Second-wave feminism was based on shared experience and activity. The filmmakers (* * *) I most admire in New Zealand are women and I've honed most of my skills while working with another woman filmmaker.
These are disparate examples and anecdotal evidence (hey - this is a blog after all) but they do indicate that women doing something makes it possible for other women to imagine doing it. Getting back to my opening point, if the standard wants more women to comment then they should probably have more women writing. At the moment Steve is posting about 60% or more of all the pieces being run, and there are no writers who can be obviously identified as female. I assumed that all the posters were male, which is apparently not the case, but I bet I'm not the only one. Choice of topic might be an issue, and the stoushing style of interaction, coupled with some really brain-dead and/or sexist comments are not usually something that women indulge in when in more female dominated spaces. However - I'd be interested to see what would happen at the standard if there were more writers identifying themselves as women. Given all available evidence I'd be inclined to expect that the number of comments by women would increase and that this would quickly snowball, and that the change to commenting style would make it a space women would be more interested in occupying.
Whether I'm right or not remains to be seen....
Comments
Great writing as usual, Lyn. :)
I hope there are actually women on the standard and that they come out. Women can be depressingly depoliticised and we need some good role models!
Stilltruckin - I reckon you're right, although I haven't been around the nets long enough to really comment. Looking back, it's one of the other reasons I decided to come out as a girl/fmeale entity at the standard. There are times when you need people to know that your commment is completely gynocentric. And we all assume that commenters are male and this won't change till there are more women openly about on the net.
Oh well, nevermind!
I can understand why some women choose not to be openly female. Some time ago I used to write under a pseudonym that was not gendered and until I started writing about womanly matters most people who weren't familiar with me in real life assumed I was male. It felt kind of safe.
Steve would know better than I do about who is whom. I've met only a few of the posters very briefly, and inferred a couple of others. I really only know one poster at all well, but have been steadily doing more e-mail with some of the others.
What they write is more interesting to me. I'm pretty pleased with that - you may disagree with their opinions (I do frequently), but they're almost always thought provoking. Its like reading the economist, one of my favourite mags.
Lynn