Today is an important day for this project, so read on...
I've wondered from the start what to do when a single letter has multiple signatories, but I made a decision to count all of them. There are two letters today with multiple signatories, hence the high numbers (which are also typically disproportionate):
Now, this is very interesting. One of today's letters, on the subject of the 60th anniversary of Israel, has 105 signatories in total. For the sake of space, the letters editor has selected 21 of them to be named in the paper - 14 men and 7 women, see below:
BUT the paper has printed all 105 names in the online version here. And guess what: more than half of them (59) are women*.
So, evidence of a gender bias on the letters page? It certainly looks like it...
* I'm confident of this, because where the gender wasn't obvious from the name, I googled the person in question, and found all their genders.
10 comments:
Possible justification for Graun policy: is it not possible that they took the most notable/significant names on the list? If the men outnumber the women there, that's society's fault, guv, not the paper's.
I expect that's it - but notable and significant to whom, and for what reasons? Oh, it's so hard, all this.
Are you planning to write to the Guardian questioning this, explaining your project and waiting to see if you get published? Obviously using your feeble, less publishable girl name...
Well, I took a look at the full list, and I recognised the names of 10 of the men, but only two of the women. Granted, that might reflect on my own unconscious sexism (do I value quintessentially 'male' achievements over 'female' - is a professor of neurobiology by definition more 'important' than a nursery school teacher?) but as I say, this is society's problem, rather than the Graun's.
Maybe the best way would be for them to stick the list of names on the wall, and throw 21 darts. Except that darts are by definition phallic and violent, innit?
I'm really enjoying this experiment, btw. Please don't get bored with it quite yet.
As a total aside, the Daily Hate Mail has today republished an entire article from the weekend edition of The Guardian, courtesy of Guardian News Group.
So now I don't know what's right and what's left anymore. A world GONE MAD.
Sarah: Yes, I will do, once I've gathered enough data.
Tim: I know what you mean and you're probably right (I recognised more of the male names too, but then I'm not au fait with the leading lights in the Jewish community).
But even so, my point is not so much that the Guardian is consciously biased in favour of men, but rather that there's a (probably subconscious) bias on the letters page that isn't present in online commenting, because online commenting is (largely) unmediated.
Because the whole point of this experiment is to question the Guardian's opinion that its mediated letters page provides a better service to the Guardian readership as a whole, you see...
Boz: Me neither - the other day I found myself in almost complete agreement with the Tory candidate for Hammersmith & Fulham, in an article I was reading in the Telegraph, ffs. But reminding myself about Derek Conway's antics usually does the trick.
I channel The Hamiltons and just think... no.
So, er, what's the split of sexes among the commentators on this blog?
Yes. Am evil.
Well, everyone who's commented is linked to on the sidebar there, so the split is currently 9:7 male to female(Wyndham doesn't count because he hasn't commented, but he got a link anyway - god, I'm benevolent).
But Boz - everyone is allowed to comment on this blog, which is the point. No one is being [pause for ominous music] *silenced*.
I have now!
Woo!
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