Bank Holiday Monday's Guardian showing a by-now familiar distribution:
Here are the topics covered:
On the subject of whether or not women are as inclined as men to express their views, Sarah pointed me at a series of extracts from language professor Deborah Cameron's recent book The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Speak Different Languages?
You can read the three extracts, which were published last Oct in the Guardian, here:
1. What Language Barrier?
2. Speak Up, I Can't Hear You
3. Back Down to Earth
While it's all very interesting to read, and highly recommended, I think the most relevant point that Cameron makes in relation to my project (and the one that Sarah mentioned) is the relationship between the tendency to speak publicly and the status - real or perceived - of the speaker. Cameron says:
'The basic trend, especially in formal and public contexts, is for higher-status speakers to talk more than lower-status ones. The gender pattern is explained by the observation that in most contexts where status is relevant, men are more likely than women to occupy high-status positions; if all other things are equal, gender itself is a hierarchical system in which men are regarded as having higher status.
That could explain the discrepancies on the letters page of the Guardian: it often publishes letters from 'prominent' or 'high-status' public figures, who - as we all know - tend to be men. Perhaps this suggests that the Guardian does after all receive many more letters from men than from women.
However, Cameron says that men only 'talk more' (or, for the purposes of this study, write more letters) when the subject under discussion is not an obviously gendered one:
'Some experimental studies have found that you can reverse the "men talk more" pattern, or at least reduce the gap, by instructing subjects to discuss a topic that both sexes consider a distinctively female area of expertise.'
This is a point that Tim made a while back: perhaps women write letters in greater numbers when they're writing about identifiably 'female' topics. But a quick look back over the results gathered so far reveals that on some individual days (although not necessarily overall), the Guardian has published more letters from women than from men on the following topics:
1. Women's rights in the workplace (including equal pay, maternity pay, flexible working arrangements to accommodate childcare, etc.).
2. The abolition of the 10p tax rate.
3. The discrepancy between the amount of money donated to animal charities (specifically donkey sanctuaries) and the amount donated to women's charities (specifically for victims of domestic violence).
4. Domestic violence.
5. Islamist extremism.
Which is interesting, because I certainly wouldn't have put the 10p tax rate abolition or extreme Islamism down as particularly 'female' issues. So is it the case that women are writing in greater numbers only when the subject under discussion is a 'female' subject, or are they writing in appreciable numbers on a broad range of topics, but only being published when the topic is identifiably 'female'?
3 comments:
Hi,
I came upon your blog because I was told that I had a letter published in the guardian either yesterday or today and was searching online for it (don't have a print copy).
At any rate, your blog is very interesting and I think I'll keep an eye on it.
Also, I'll be interested to see how I get represented, as I am a woman with a man's name (Jamie).
Anyway, in comment to this entry -- 5. Islamist extremism -- I think this is a topic that women are more likely to write about than men -- because in day-to-day life, women are more affected by it than men are. Women's rights are a huge issue for Islamist watchers. I've been writing about and speaking about my anger at Islamist societies for their lack of women's rights since before the fall of the Taliban. Just a thought? What do you think?
Hi Jamie, thanks for leaving a comment. I can't see you in either yesterday's or today's print edition, unless your letter is in one of the supplements?
You're right about Islamism: although it's not usually presented in the news as a typically 'women's issue', it certainly does have a serious impact on women. The same may also be true of the abolition of the 10p tax rate, considering that there are more female low-earners than male.
I think my point was that although issues like these have serious implications for women, they're not generally perceived as exclusively 'female' topics in the way that, say, anorexia, abortion, domestic violence and maternity leave are. Of course you know as well as I do that these topics are not and should not be considered 'exclusively' female, either.
I would have counted you as a man, by the way, unless your letter had made it explicit you were a woman - it wouldn't have occurred to me that Jamie is also a woman's name. I'll remember that when I'm looking in future!
I definitely take your point about things not perceived as "female topics". It's an interesting question about, well, I guess the anthropological term is "structural violence", to note that things not considered women's issues (like 10p tax, Islamism) are in fact women's issues but will never be called it because to do so would recognise inequalities that we don't want to talk about. If that makes sense.
I did find the letter -- http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2277914,00.html -- but you're right, it's in one of the supplements. Harshly edited too, oh well.
And, yes, since coming to the UK to study I have definitely been mistaken for a man almost any time that I engage in online interactions. People are usually very confused upon meeting me after we've had an email correspondence :). In America, though, Jamie is probably more a woman's name than a man's...
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