Re: "Genderscape" of the left? of the internet? of this list?

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 3:31 AM 6/16/96, Zeynep Tufekcioglu wrote:

>Why are there so few women in this list? Is it because the internet is a
>more male toy? Or is it just this list? I find it hard to believe that the
>left in western countries is even more male-dominated than here.

On the U.S. left, such as it is, Marxism has for the last 20 years been
denounced as insufficiently attentive to more fashionable concerns like
racial and sexual oppression and the destruction of nature. I think this is
an unfair rap against Marxism, but that helps explain the
underrepresentation of women on the Marx-tinged left. Of course, there's
also the Internet demographic at work, which is, what, like 70% male?

This also helps explain why "Communism" has a bad name on the "left," at
least in intellectual circles. (Of course, this is only one cause among
many.) I've been patronizingly dismissed as a "dinosaur," one "speaking
>from beyond the grave," by a prominent U.S. feminist economist, who also
calls herself a "socialist," or used to before she fell in love with
econometrics. She, and another prominent U.S. feminist economist, have also
told me that deindustrialization is only a concern of white men.

Doug

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