Martin: this initiative is about profile raising and encouragment not “disadvantage” – Jennie’s comments, if anything, point to the value an initiative like this for correcting a perception that the blogosphere is male-dominated. Sure, there are other “groups” we might want to encourage, but you can hardly blame the Campaign for Gender Balance for tackling the gender angle!

But given that my reading list and Jennie’s reading list is increasingly similar, and she’s said all that already, instead I’ll just note the shared brain effect again and tick the ‘notify me’ box…

Also, it’ll take me ages to type out a list of women bloggers I admire. I read about 300 blogs a day (via the magic of the LJ friends page) and maybe two thirds of those are women… But yes, I shall be submitting noms.

* innocent expression *

And DAMN YOU, LIB DEM VOICE for inspiring me to make more blog posts. I post too much as it is!

http://theyorkshergob.livejournal.com/22351.html

Pseudo-intellectual theory: women who have worked their way up in traditional media have done so by fitting in to the male-designed system. They write political polemics and fit the facts to suit their argument, in classic masculine argumentative style, where winning counts more than being right. Blogging is new, and there is no system for people to fit into. Ergo, there’s no reason why ‘women blogging about politics’ has to fit into the expectations set by ‘women writing about politics for national newspapers’. Men blogging about politics, on the other hand, tend to write much as their newspaper counterparts do.

That was probably all complete nonsense being, as it was, the first thought to pop into my head. But my underlying point is that there is quite probably more than meets the eye to this. There are lots of men writing awful politics blogs, and there’s no reason for wanting women to emulate them.

The blogosphere is much more pink than blue; you just wouldn’t know it from talking to anyone in the media.