Re: gender mix

[bill mitchell <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>All this talk of posting frequency made me notice how male this list is.
>Aside from the very occasional (and usually very short) posting by Victoria
>Chick, I don't recall seeing any obviously female names here. Is this
>representative of the silent majority of nonposters? Is it a function of PK
>or economics or the nature of the net in general? PEN-L is heavily male,
>but there are some women there. What's going on here?
>
Doug

ever walked down the corridors of an economics dept. lately? or for that matter
ever? economics seems to be a discipline that gets males streamed into it. our
lost mate herb wrote a book about stuff like this with samuel bowles. it maybe
that economics is associated with maths and that has been clearly a male domain
in high schools.

pkt is more academic than pen-l. pen-l has the advantage that it embraces
practictioners as members (unionists, activists, lawyers etc) but pkt is dry
economic discussion. the sample therefore selects itself.

there has been a lot of general discussion as to whether the internet is male
dominated. i doubt whether it is  any more so than the occupational segregation
that already exists in capitalist economies. it is hard for a check out
operator in a supermarket to play with netscape while she is working her arse
off for a pittance. a cultural note here: i noted that the shop assistants in
supermarkets in the US (lets say california) were highly unionised and
relatively well paid and mostly older people of both sexes. in OZ, despite out
higher (much) union coverage, shop assistants are mostly teenage females who
get shit money and are not unionised. we think it is partly b/c of difficulty
of organising as well as instrumental attachments to the labour force. but then
why are the US unions, who have been pretty unsuccessful selling their "wares"
to the labour force in general, has so much success with this group?

kind regards
bill

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