Those of us who write for and read This Mommy Gig are no strangers to social media, Web 2.0 or the tool of those popular terms called blogging. Some work in corporate offices, some have virtual offices or part-time jobs, others concentrate full-time on their families; but, we all make time to leverage the latest online tools. And we’re by no means alone. More than 36 million women in the U.S. write and read blogs every week.
So, why is it then that when Chris Brogan decides to interview 32 “leaders in social media” in his upcoming twebinar* only five of them are women? This dearth of women being asked to speak or being interviewed about social media has already been discussed by greater minds than me. Lena West talked about it back in February. And Connie Reece called out my own city’s Chamber of Commerce for being guilty of it back in April.
But, what hit me when I looked at the list of leaders is that they’re mostly people who make the conference circuit. So, the visiblity that affords them perpetuates more opportunities for more visible engagements.
And, then I was also hit by this recent tweet from Laura Fitten, who I know better as Pistachio. Laura is a consultant who travels that conference circuit quite a bit herself, and she was asking if men at these events ever get asked “who is watching your kids?”
I somehow doubt they do. It is expected when you see a man traveling for work that if he has a family, his wife is taking care of his children. But, the reverse is not as expected when women travel. And, based just on personal observation, it doesn’t often happen.
When my church held a forum for men, where they spent a weekend away from their families, not much changed in the makeup of my 5-year-olds Sunday School class. But, when a women’s weekend retreat was held, nearly 50 percent of my regular attendees were away at grandma’s house for the weekend!
By no means an exhaustive study on the topic, or necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison, it all came together to make me ask: is the reason we don’t see more women speaking or being held up as leaders in social media the fact that fewer of them have (or feel they have) the freedom to travel the conference circuit to make the connections and get their name out there?
*I love Twitter, but does everything have to be named for it now?
I agree - what confounds me (and I think may cause part of the problem) is that women understand social dynamics so innately. My grandmother is a good example - when something happens in her community she knows exactly how to get things done and who she needs to go to in order to spread different types of information. It is not online but it is the same dynamic.
I wrote a post on this called “Social Networking and the Popular Girls” - http://tinyurl.com/5scg96
And there are plenty of women who can speak intelligently about this topic. The women that contribute her, the BlogHers, Charlene Li, Beth Kanter, Beth Dunn, Tara Hunt… just may take a little looking around.
Rachel Happes last blog post..The New Era of Management by Committee
Laura: Thanks for this post, couldn’t agree with you more. No question that women should be better represented in the social media speaking circuit. I know Jeremiah Owyang has blogged about this topic before, but things haven’t changed since then.
For what it’s worth, I thought Debbie Weil and Geoff Livingston did a good job of providing a better balance between men and women speakers at Blog Potomac (www.blogpotomac.com). Too bad that’s not the norm, because it should be.
And, for the record, I’ve traveled quite a bit in my years at Dell, and been to several speaking engagements over the last two years. Number of times I was asked who’s watching the kids = 0.
Lionel Menchacas last blog post..Dell at Red Hat Summit and FUDCon
Thanks for the post. I can only say how wonderful it is for me to finally be completely free to travel to conferences — whether that’s to another side of the state or another side of the country (assuming a client or employer is funding part of the trip) — now that my son is grown up. I was a single mom for 15 years and obviously found it difficult to find someone to watch my son for a whole weekend. His father was ambiguous about taking him on any regular basis, so he was not a resource I could count on. But here’s an observation: how many moms & wives will not allow themselves to go away for a few days, even when they can? We don’t take very good care of ourselves on the whole, so we contribute to the problem. I don’t disagree with anything you or the commenters so far have said; however, my experience has been that as a gender we are terrible about making time for ourselves a priority, whether that’s a conference, a girls’ trip to Vegas, an iinexpensive retreat or a camping trip. I was guilty of it for a time, too, until I realized the caregiver had nothing left to give unless she fueled her own reserves somehow. I propose that when we pick up the ball all the time, what is left for our inner circle to pick up? Can we let go of the reins easily enough? Do we believe we deserve conferences, getaways and the like? Just food for thought.
As far as popularity and the “speakers circuit,” I feel a slight bit of distaste for anyone who spends too much time on it. That’s probably unfair, I know. I belong to a lot of organizations from church to professional to self-help. The speakers who get very, very popular are not always the best, necessarily, but the ones who do a lot of marketing, blogging, self-promotion, and speaking begets more speaking engagements. They are often very good at saying exactly what their audience wants to hear. For whatever my opinion on that is worth, thanks for indulging me!
Great post. I wonder, too, if some of this doesn’t start when the unmarried people are asked to go on trips before the married people (with or without children).
Suzanne~You’re so right too, we need to take care of ourselves (personally and professionally) or we can’t take care of anyone else.
Suzanne - you hit on a great point! It’s something I barely alluded to with my “(or feel they have)” comment in the post. Many of us might be able to travel more if we didn’t feel so darn guilty for every bit of time away from our kids. A healthy and happy parent is a better parent, I believe, so time away can be just as important as time with them.
I feel just a bit defensive. My Video on the Net conference in Boston this past fall featured over 49% female speakers. At Enterprise 2.0, my first panel of the day was moderating 2 women and 1 man. My second panel was to speak alongside 2 women and another man.
Why were there 5? We grabbed people where we could grab them at the event, worked for hours and hours at pulling in people with the stories we needed to explore, and got what we got. When you see the length of all three interviews per each person- over 90 separate content segments not including the host bits, it’ll make sense how much we got done in a few day’s time.
Should more women be featured at conferences? Hell yes. When it comes to social media, there’s quite a list:
* Laura Fitton
* Maggie Fox
* KD Paine
* Jen McClure
* Kami Watson Huyse
* Deb Schultz
* Tara Hunt
* Rachel Happe
* Becky McCray
* Connie Reece
* Jennifer Leggio
* and I could do this all day without pausing.
Please don’t presume that I don’t honor women speaking on topics of importance.
Chris Brogan…s last blog post..YahooGroups vs Google Groups
Chris - I hope you don’t think this was meant as a personal attack. I’ve got great respect for you and the work you do. It was just a combination of things (seeing your twebinar and Laura’s tweet so close together) that gave me this idea about maybe why this happens. I don’t think there is any intentional bias from you or any other event organizer - rather, I think it is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that being a mom often means being less able (or willing) to travel. That travel on the circuit is what brings the visibility and, as you pointed out in your case, the accessibility that leads to more speaking opportunities. No presumption was made that you do not honor women, so I apologize if it appears that way. You were simply working with what was available to you.