Comments on: Hidden Women, Hidden Writers

By: Stephanie Zvan

Stephanie Zvan — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:01:24 +0000

And hooray to Christina for pointing out that all of this applies to other underrepresented and underlauded groups as well: http://scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2011/01/everyones_talking_about_it.php

By: David Dobbs

David Dobbs — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:13:33 +0000

Two additions to a hurried read of the comment string:1. V important to keep in mind the what-group-are-we-talking-about bias: That is, that we may think Ed & Carl get more attn overall b/c they get more attn in the conversations we're tuned into. There are MILLIONS of people who know who Rebecca Skloot is and what's she's done, but who have never heard or Carl or Ed,.2. As someone mentioned, frequency of production is big here. Ed posts substantial posts nearly every single day, and Carl writes many times a month for the highest profile pubs. Of course they'll be more in the mix. And why do we hear more of Carl than Gina Kolata? B/c he blogs and tweets, and she doesn't, and we live in Blogotweetdom. I've a sister who v much knows who Kolata is, and Skloot, but not of Zimmer. Many more like that. 3. W all due respect to Jen O, who is awesome, I wouldn't think even she would consider a baby. (Ed … oh, let's not go there. Ok: Ed's a baby.) Carl is prominent, and gets put at top of nearly everyone's A list, b/c he's been writing incredibly great stuff for top markets for quite a while: hundreds of articles, more books than I can count, he was one of pioneers of science blogging. I think it's legit – and necessary and urgently valuable — to ask why many of us can't come up instantly with a female equivalent. But the truth is, even allowing for the idea/fact/possibility that there are women with who've done work of equal volume and quality but who have gone overlooked, that there are very few ppl of either gender whose contributions to sci writing equal Carl's over the last 15-20 years. He has an extraordinary body or work, and he's in his prime and keeps getting better and finding new way to make contributions. So it makes sense to ask either a) why some similarly capable woman's name isn't as prominent (tho we have to account for the selection biases mentioned above) or b) what might be preventing women of similar talent from achieving as much. But it strikes me as inaccurate to suggest Carl is getting undue attention, cred, mention, etc. I say this merely b/c there's a sort of subtext that emerges now and then suggesting he's overhyped. We may be underhyping high-quality women writers and bloggers, but I can't see that anyone is overhyping Carl. I hope I'm not in trouble.

By: Scicurious

Scicurious — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:46:34 +0000

See, this is another thing that I find interesting. I DIDN'T REMEMBER Jennifer Oullette. I just READ HER BOOK, and I did not remember that she has a killer blog. I even interact with her frequently, more frequently than I do with Carl Zimmer, for example. But her name was not in my mind, and I think that's partially because the men's names are much more in the public consciousness in the science blog world. I think that says a LOT about the biases we are dealing with.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:01:30 +0000

Ed and Carl being listed first and Rebecca later or not at all is partly because of cliquishness. Rebecca is not necessarily being excluded because she is not part of any of the key bloggy cliques, but Ed and Carl very much are, and thus Rebecca gets forgotten. The fact that she is number one and is not listed as number one is, in my opinion, not because she is a woman, though it could have been that way had other factors not been at play.Of the first three points you reiterate from Clancy's post, I think the third is the most relevant and common in my opinion. The friend bias can work a number of ways and as women are simply more common or active in a subfield the good old boy network can easily become a good old girl network. Women always get talked over and the guy saying the thing the woman just said is very real, and bad, but has become so obvious as it is almost cliche. Those are important points, but the third point is where the really bad shit happens, as we've seen in many different contexts. There are girl versions of Ed and Carl. I'm surprised no one has mentioned them. I would start with Jennifer Ouellette. Gina Kolata is not chopped liver. Pat Shipman has done major real science, published successful science books for the public, and has had an amazing science writing career. Ed and Carl are babies compared to these women. They, like Rebecca, just happen to not be big in blogs. One of the down sides of something like Science Online 20xx (and there are very few down sides) is that it makes it feel like the whole world is all about blogs. And sometimes it is. But only sometimes. It may be an important irony that the blogosphere has reinvented sexism in the 21 century. Shame.

By: D. C.

D. C. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:34:29 +0000

We are all very, very tired of making a point on a blog, on twitter, or in a meeting, being ignored, having a man make the same point, then having that man get all the credit. Very tired.And no, it's not just you. We have the same complaint (however politely put) from Justice Ginsburg (and IIRC Justice O'Connor as well.)

By: Kelly McCullough

Kelly McCullough — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:06:42 +0000

Interesting analogy with Romance in terms of visibility/respect. Romance is a bit over fifty percent* of the fiction market, and thus the dominant form of fiction in America, dwarfing the much more respected genre of literary fiction as well as all of the other genres, yet in terms of critical acclaim Romance doesn't get nearly the respect it deserves, generally coming in last in terms of the way it's spoken of. This despite the fact that something on the order of 3/4s of all books are bought by women, many of whom demonstrably (see sales figures) read romance.*Last time I checked. The numbers are available via RWA.

By: John

John — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:57:45 +0000

Thanks for the many excellent points both in the original post and in comments.At the risk of offering yet another excuse for the omission of Rebecca's name from those top writer discussions, I do wonder whether cognitive framing might have had something to do with it, too. Carl and Ed write prodigiously online and in print. Rebecca has done excellent work in both media, too, but she's primarily known these days for her outstanding book. And indeed, whenever I've been in a discussion about great science books over the past year, her "Immortal Life" and Deborah Blum's "The Poisoner's Handbook" always seem to be the first books listed. So I wonder whether the speakers were unconsciously picking names from the ranks of bloggers more than book writers. Even if so, that may not negate your larger point.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:27:21 +0000

"Ed is… definitely part of the solution"Only because others precipitated it…

By: Stephanie Zvan

Stephanie Zvan — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:43:56 +0000

Ed is awesome and definitely part of the solution. David and Daniel too. I'm quite sure Ed's comment had as much to do with his self-deprecating British charm as anything. It just raised something that needed highlighting. Plus I got him to go back and check his linking stats. 🙂

By: twistedphysics

twistedphysics — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:39:12 +0000

Ed Yong does indeed promote loads of women science bloggers; I've discovered several thanks to him. So lay off my buddy Ed. 🙂 He's an agent for change, and uses his powers for good. So does Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.That said, there's definitely an invisibility problem. Cocktail Party Physics is all women, in fact, and rarely gets any top mentions, although there are other reasons for that beyond gender invisibility (longer, more infrequent posts, the fact that there are far fewer physics blogs out there than, say, skepticism, biology and neuroscience, etc).And let's not forget Ed's comment at Scio11, that men often DM him asking to retweet their posts and women never do. I'm as guilty of this as the next woman — and I'm hardly a shrinking violet. 🙂 Cultural conditioning is hard to kick.So maybe a good starting point to instigate change might be:1. Female bloggers: start asking for attention; heck, just demand it. :)2. Male bloggers: start seeking out female bloggers a bit more to highlight.And we'll see where we can go