There’s another flurry in the recurring cycle of “where are all the female political bloggers” going on this week, fed by a couple of posts at Kevin Drum’s site.
I don’t think there’s some sort of deliberate conspiracy on the part of Kevin Drum and his pals to keep female bloggers out of their blogrolls. But I do think there’s a particular blindness that left-leaning men enagage in. I believe they generally do care about womens’ issues and want to see women playing a more active and vocal role in the general discourse. But simultaneously, they don’t realize that their inaction is not helping that day come to pass.
Despite decades having passed since “the feminist revovlution”, this is still much more of a man’s world than it is an egalitarian one. Men in positions of authority, like the top bloggers, need to realize that they have to actually do something to help change the status quo.
I just posted a suggestion on Ezra Klein’s site to this end, and I’m going to repost it here:
How about creating a new mini-blogroll on your front page. Update it regularly. In it, you link to bloggers who ought to have better recognition but for whatever reason, don’t get it. And make a point of being diverse in your linking. To make the workload manageable, I’d suggest updates every 4 to 6 weeks and no more than 5 to 7 blogs listed in the blogroll.
Even better, try to get one or two of the other big-name Lefty bloggers to do the same thing.
I’m not the only person to make this suggestion. Several people said more or less the same thing in the comments to Kevin Drum’s post. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. Maybe the guys will take some steps to show they do walk the walk when it comes to advancing women. Or maybe deep down they really are a bunch of sexist pigs. Let’s see what happens.