But that’s the point isn’t it. It’s not so much a question for women of crikey to answer what needs to be done but for the men of crikey (aka, the majority of crikey’s subscribers at present) to determine if they really ARE interested in reading better coverage of women and gender.

I’m not so sure.

As one of the regular contributors who is not simply parachuted in to talk about their area of ‘lady business’, Helen Razer’s voice has for years been unapologetically authentic and is far too frequently met with ‘is it her time of the month’ style backlash.

I’ve worked in politics/government and read crikey for years but have become an adament non-subscriber in the last year or so because the anti-woman, anti-feminist clangers that come up in the writing occasionally have just pissed me off so much.

There should be no getting around the basic idea that if it’s important to women it should be important to a leading independent national news service. And certainly important enough to be front and centre in the content.

Frankly, clean up your act and become consistent, principled and inclusive and I’ll be back in a heart beat. Waste this opportunity by doing nothing but try and cram us into a women’s blog and i’ll stay as where i am, a disappointed but resolved squatter.

A special women’s blog is a crap idea. Totally tokenistic. And why keep the females in a separate pen? If you’re serious about this issue you’ve raised, you need to get more women writers on board and bring a wider variety of viewpoints and subjects to your website as a whole.

In relation to the above comments, I see there are a lot which seem to be focusing on women’s perceived inadequacies of themselves, e.g. ‘We’re technically incompetent,’ ‘We’re more emotional than rational,’ ‘We’re too timid for robust debate,’ ‘We’re too busy with housework to participate in online communities.’

Whaaat?

It’s more WHO WANTS TO LISTEN TO A BUNCH OF MIDDLE AGED GUYS TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY KNOW ABOUT POLLS?

Lionel Elmore wrote that (see above). I don’t know him, or anyone at Crikey or on it. But yesterday I attended a DSE meeting in the bush. Wanting answers about the new crazed policy of burning the bush in bulk. Eight women, two men. The women had battled away for decades revegetating, weeding, confronting rednecks, bureaucrats, loggers etc.

So Elmore is right: many women resist the sick sociology of the bush, the intimidation, ostracism and marginalisation. Very few men do. Yet they remain unsung. They don’t exist in any media, except local papers. One was locally quite famous, Mary White. I came across the elderly Mary weeding the Otway foreshore one freezing day. She loooked frozen and ill, red eyes popping out of her head. I prevailed upon her to go home. A week later she was dead.

Crikey, don’t go down this path. Just keep listening to your readers and provide good content.

Seems to me Crikey could address the apparent issues without risking creating a place that is perceived to be the No Idea section of Crikey. further isolating women who apparently don’t want to comment on the daily stories. These things have already been suggested: a) commission more female writers and more female lead bloggers - I think many of your blog leaders are men; and b) work out what issues you aren’t covering that you need to or want to, and include them in the daily mail or a new blog.

If it’s a subscriber recruitment issue, that’s a matter for Crikey, of course. But please, please, please, don’t call it a women’s blog. I think that’s a retrograde step. One of your commenters refers to women reading lighter stuff and feeling guilty about it. If you want to include a different angle, a pop media blog, a family issues blog, a work-life balance blog, a health and beauty blog, be brave and call it that, and make it clear that both men and women need and/or want to read lighter stuff. Though it begs the question, then, why readers of that would subscribe to Crikey. At the risk of repeating myself, I subscribe to Crikey for politics, not recipes.

This convoluted, partial and clearly disingenuous explanation may illuminate for some why women either don’t subscribe to Crikey or conceal their involvement behind a husband’s/male partners subscription.

Perhaps someone could explain it to me sometime …

I read Crikey and love it. I seriously miss Stephen Mayne’s comments on business and economics.

The reason why there are fewer female subscribers could be that women rarely spend money on themselves. A man, or a husband, would think nothing of spending hundreds (even thousands) of dollars on subscriptions and hobbies, but a woman and especially a wife would think twice.

Look at the difference in size and expense of their cameras, their TV’s, cars, hobbies etc..
A women has to spend on decorating the house, clothing the kids and giving them a holiday, and on herself and probably in that order.

The actual subscribers may be skewed in favour of men, but a lot of those subscriptions would be read by the women in the household. In my case, I am the subscriber and my husband does not read Crikey, however I cut and paste interesting articles for him to read.

And to reiterate Mary Kozlovski’s point, the consideration first and foremost is the quality and relevance of the writing, not the sex of the author. Same goes for the readers — the blog wouldn’t be written exclusively for women, it would be written in such a way that it could (and should) interest everyone.

This blog would be launched in the name of adding yet another layer to our coverage, one that doesn’t already exist. And it’s not to say that female bloggers would all be herded into one play pen, either. Women who write about climate change for example, stay on our environment blog Rooted, etc… We’re not rounding up all the contributors who happen to have ovaries into one space to talk about… the fact that they have ovaries.

This blog would be about covering the stuff that currently falls through the cracks here, for various reasons… We couldn’t say for sure what that is yet, it all depends on who jumps on board.

Personally, I’ve always cringed at the idea of a ‘women’s blog.’ But the more I’ve read the feedback from our innocent little tweeted question last week, the more I’m convinced that Crikey could do with a space for this stuff. I also know that running the initial question has prompted some of the most engaging correspondence we’ve read in ages.

And there are blogs that do this kind of thing well — The XX Factor on Slate, http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/, The Dawn Chorus, http://thedawnchorus.wordpress.com/, Jezebel, http://jezebel.com/, Wonkette http://wonkette.com/ (which is just great writing on politics with an ette on the end)….just for starters.

What the blog won’t be is a token nod to stereotypical light, lady fluff.

OK enough accidental euphemisms. As you were.

This debate seems to have moved from ‘why doesn’t Crikey have as many female subscribers’ into ‘Crikey doesn’t publish enough female writers’. Whether the two are correlated I can’t say, but if you’re concerned that you aren’t publishing enough material written by women on parliamentary politics or business or whatever, then commission more female writers and journalists to write for you. Although, I’m a subscriber and I personally never noticed until you brought it up.

I think your time would be better spent making the quality in Crikey the best it can be, rather than wasting time creating a ‘woman’ blog and a ‘man’ blog. If I stop subscribing to Crikey, it’ll be because the quality of the writing drops.

Seems to me a blog is a bit of a piss-take and a cop out, Crikey. Sorry, but if you’re serious about wanting more women involved then include women in the main game, not just the side show.

And Jenny Morris, I completely echo your thoughts about commenting. I can’t imagine why women would feel too intimidated to comment other than being flamed, which is all part of the fun really.

I am not interested in a Crikey women’s blog. I fear it could turn into the same sort of thing The Age is now serving up on Sundays in its smaller coloured mag. I no longer read it so haven’t even bothered remembering the name. The Age has made “women’s” a synonym for lightweight, frothy, self-indulgent, navel-gazing, simplistic and shallow. If I want to know how other women are coping with a) childbirth b) child-rearing c) relationships d) work-life balance etc etc, I talk to friends, read the “women’s magazines” or go to other sources. I don’t want to read about it in Crikey - that’s not why I subscribe (see above).

If Crikey is going to put together a women’s blog, may I suggest it also puts together a men’s blog. Which begs the question what’s going to be different. If nothing, why bother?

Oh, and I’m not intimidated about commenting. The only reason I don’t comment more often is a) I’m too busy at work; b) I don’t have anything to contribute on a particular issue; or c) my computer is blocking the comment function. I’m surprised some women feel they can’t comment, and apparently are asking for a safe harbour in which to do so. At first glance, I’m unlikely to visit, but never say never, eh?

I smell a promotional ‘“rat” here. Is Crikey pursuing the issuing of sexism as a promotional exercise in the expectation of increasing its readership by women? I would have thought that the average Crikey reader was well beyond sexist discrimination.