Why Do I Follow So Many Female Sci/Tech Writers?
As part of my ongoing effort to stay out of the "echo chamber" and learn about my biases, I recently took a look at the science and technology writers I follow, the folks I rely upon as reliable sci/tech news reporters and analysts.
What I found is that my list is about 75% female.
I know I wasn't merely "chasing skirts", so I decided to dig a bit deeper to see if there were attributes these female writers possessed that were different from, or less prevalent in, male authors.
I looked first to see if the women preferentially covered topics that matched my interests, but I found no such general emphasis compared to male writers.
This meant I had to look at the writing itself. This investigation was made more difficult by my lack of an adequate liberal arts education, something not required for engineers when I was in college. So I was not really prepared to do a serious lit-crit comparative analysis.
As best I could, I looked at the flow of many articles on common topics across multiple writers. Were they structured differently? Did they use language differently? Were some more concise than others? Did some regularly provide better context, relevance or background?
I won't bore you with all the other factors I attempted to evaluate. I'm not good at this type of analysis.
In the end, the only readily discernible difference I found between the female and male writers I follow had to do with when and how each wrote in the first person. That is, when and how they inserted their own opinions.
By and large (but not universally) the men tended toward a greater or lesser form of "mansplaining", where they wrote as an authority rendering an informed opinion or interpretation. Which may not in any way be wrong or inappropriate! But it does tend to identify the writer more with the subject than with the reader.
The women tended to do this differently. First, they tended to insert their opinions from the perspective of an audience member interested in the subject. For example, inserting their sense of "Wow!" at the relevance of an event or discovery, or the excitement of interviewing a legend. This form of audience identification seems to increase the bond between writer and reader.
I find I view sci/tech news primarily as an opportunity to learn, not just a chance to become better informed. And I find the role of "explainer" taken by many male authors doesn't work as well for me as the role of "fellow learner" taken by many women.
The exceptions to the above were when scientists were writing to/for the public about their own work or that of colleagues, in which case all authors, male and female alike, tended toward being explainers.
Again, this is based solely on my own curated feeds, and certainly can't represent sci/tech writers (or readers) in any general way.
Any sociologists or lit-crit folks out there want to take a look at this?
What I found is that my list is about 75% female.
I know I wasn't merely "chasing skirts", so I decided to dig a bit deeper to see if there were attributes these female writers possessed that were different from, or less prevalent in, male authors.
I looked first to see if the women preferentially covered topics that matched my interests, but I found no such general emphasis compared to male writers.
This meant I had to look at the writing itself. This investigation was made more difficult by my lack of an adequate liberal arts education, something not required for engineers when I was in college. So I was not really prepared to do a serious lit-crit comparative analysis.
As best I could, I looked at the flow of many articles on common topics across multiple writers. Were they structured differently? Did they use language differently? Were some more concise than others? Did some regularly provide better context, relevance or background?
I won't bore you with all the other factors I attempted to evaluate. I'm not good at this type of analysis.
In the end, the only readily discernible difference I found between the female and male writers I follow had to do with when and how each wrote in the first person. That is, when and how they inserted their own opinions.
By and large (but not universally) the men tended toward a greater or lesser form of "mansplaining", where they wrote as an authority rendering an informed opinion or interpretation. Which may not in any way be wrong or inappropriate! But it does tend to identify the writer more with the subject than with the reader.
The women tended to do this differently. First, they tended to insert their opinions from the perspective of an audience member interested in the subject. For example, inserting their sense of "Wow!" at the relevance of an event or discovery, or the excitement of interviewing a legend. This form of audience identification seems to increase the bond between writer and reader.
I find I view sci/tech news primarily as an opportunity to learn, not just a chance to become better informed. And I find the role of "explainer" taken by many male authors doesn't work as well for me as the role of "fellow learner" taken by many women.
The exceptions to the above were when scientists were writing to/for the public about their own work or that of colleagues, in which case all authors, male and female alike, tended toward being explainers.
Again, this is based solely on my own curated feeds, and certainly can't represent sci/tech writers (or readers) in any general way.
Any sociologists or lit-crit folks out there want to take a look at this?
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