Female IR Bloggers

Last week, Political Violence @ a Glance, asked where are all the female international relations (IR) bloggers.   This week Taylor Marvin and Barbara F. Walter answered that question with four main points: 

1.  High barriers to entry into the elite blogosphere.  Almost all have PhDs, are tenured, and from elite universities, which means they are more likely to be men.  There are fewer women with the credentials.  

This point goes hand in hand with "Do babies matter"?  Evidence suggests that female academics are "punished" for having families, which might explain the low numbers of women in IR as tenured faculty.  This means ensuring that universities pay attention to the types of barriers that women face in academia and address them. 

 2.  Women are simply not being asked to participate in blogs as often as are men. 

This means that prominent blogs should reach out to women, but it also means that women should reach out to prominent blogs.  The book Lean In talks about how women hold back when it comes to "sitting at the table."  The natural tendency for many women is to wait to be called on instead of volunteering an opinion.  This does not hold for all women though, just think about "Maya" from Zero Dark Thirty. 

3.  The blogosphere could deter greater female participation. Female bloggers are more likely to be dismissed for their gender than male bloggers.

Again, this a point made in Lean In. Women are just not taken as seriously as men when it comes to being experts on topics that have traditionally been dominated by men.  Both men and women are culprits when it comes to subtle and not so subtle remarks about the competency of women at their job.  The moral of the story is to stop assuming that "female x got the job because she is woman."  Instead, try reading her work and commenting on it. 

4.  Women may simply be less interested in blogging about professional topics than men because women simply have less time to blog than men, women are less confident in their opinions, and/or because women are less likely to self-promote than men.

The first explanation (the time factor) is perhaps the answer that most women would give if asked the question about why they do not blog.  The other two explanation are difficult to discern (without conducting an experiment, and experiments do suggest this as Marvin and Walter point out). 

Another reason there might not be many female bloggers is because