Joey’s collection of random readings and thoughts
There’s good reason why strong female role models deter other women from aiming for the top
A good argument by Martha Gill in The Guardian that how women in leadership positions are treated discourages other women from following in their footsteps.
“Simply placing women in high-ranking jobs is not enough. Social attitudes matter. If these prominent women are treated with social disdain – if derision and hostility lower their status, despite their title – following in their footsteps becomes unappetising. Women are actively deterred from the job.”
Everything I read in Gill’s opinion resonates with what I’ve heard and seen covering politics.
“No, women are not suffering from some internal confidence “issue”, or failure of imagination. They are rational actors. They know a cautionary tale when they see one.
If the rewards of becoming a politician or tech CEO are outweighed by an unsurvivable hit to social status or future career prospects, they may quite rationally choose to pour their energies into something else. As men would. I have often wondered what would happen to female aspiration if they were encouraged to believe (as men sometimes are, often rather groundlessly) that their romantic prospects would hugely expand if they attained some elevated career position. Rather than told the opposite. “No, women are not suffering from some internal confidence “issue”, or failure of imagination. They are rational actors. They know a cautionary tale when they see one.”
“Participate or Perish”
McMaster Prof Susan Edwards explores how graduate students are expected to participate in non-academic extra-curricular activities to ensure their advancement within the academy. “Participate or Perish” is a word-play upon the well-known phrase “publish or perish” that refers to the competition for academic jobs which are fewer in number than the number of PhDs graduating.
There’s no formula for success balancing “extra-curricular” and traditional academic requirements.
There are some commonalities with journalism. There are more journalists than journalism jobs. Getting hired into a journalism job requires balancing between getting published (often unpaid) in traditional publications, “extra-curricular” activities such as establishing a brand on social media, all while not threatening the traditional way of doing things which is not working.
Elon Musk hates journalists but journalists love Twitter. Where does that leave us?
John Naughton writes in The Guardian what I know to be true – Twitter is now a terrible place for journalism, yet I haven’t left.
[I write this “multi-ball” roundup while my blog is under construction. Nobody will actually read this until the new website launches a few weeks from now. The goal of the redesign – getting myself off Twitter]
Naughton’s piece comes a few days after both NPR and PBS left Twitter following Chief Twit Elon Musk labelling them as “government-funded” outlets – a tag previously reserved for state-controlled media enterprises.
“The answer is that there is a select category of humans who are obsessive users of Twitter: politicians; people who work in advertising, PR and “communications”; and journalists. These are people who spend every waking moment on the platform, and use it to disseminate information, argue, troll, boast and engage in relentless virtue-signalling. Given that some (many?) of these people work in media, their obsession with Twitter meant that it had become, de facto, a significant part of the public sphere. If you wanted to be anyone in that networked world, you had to be on Twitter.”
Musk already broke verification, removing the exclusivity of the “blue checkmark.”
I know what I need to do to leave Twitter.