Where are the AFrican Women bloggers?
on February 25, 2005
Category: Blogosphere, African Women
Last week there was a hell of a "fem fest" over at Pinko Feminist Hellcat on the "tiresome" theme of
"Where are the Women Bloggers" debacles that happen every three months or so, and it only proves our point. Having the gall to point out that yes, we exist, is apparently unforgivable. The attacks women go for this–women who stated this quite civilly were called hysterical and accused of attacking people. They were also called dykes, ugly, manhaters, moonbats, and had their looks derided and their appeal to the opposite sex questioned. Because, you know, that’s civil.
Plenty of comment, women talking back - this one from Trish Wilson stands out for me
noticed another common tactic the guys use to silence women. When we confront them with our concerns, they claim they feel "attacked" and then "demand an apology." A commenter wrote that at Alas, a commenter on my blog wrote it to me, and I ran into a whiny guy in real life who said the exact same thing to me when I confronted him with his drivel. It would be an effective stopper if I allowed it to get to me, but I don’t. To use your words, Sheelz, these guys get all whiny and complain that their fee-fees are hurt when we women confront them with their condescending tones, their attempts to hijack comments sections, and with their sexism. Let them whine, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not my business to make them feel better.
Now all this talk of women bloggers, minority bloggers, bloggers of colour etc is great stuff BUT no one is talking about AFRICAN women bloggers, especially those blogging from Africa rather than the diaspora. If anyone’s voice is lost it is that of African women. When it comes to the mainstream media and even the" alternative" so called "progressive" media and that includes the Blogger world, technologically we don’t exist - but actually we do. A few weeks ago I reported on the African IT initiative
which will provide access to information and communication technologies and community based centers for "e-education, e-health and e-governance initiatives"
The great thing about the initiative is that the centres will be run by women which will put them at the "forefront of information technology development on the continent." Another technology initative is being run by Gender Links which piloted a daily internet link-up between community groups across South Africa’s nine provinces during the 16 days activism on Gender Violence last year. They have now formed a partnership with a host of organisations and community NGOs to run seven more Cyber Dialogues linked to a daily paper, the Gem news.
Over 50 networks and institutions around the globe, including UNIFEM regional and World Bank Public Information offices, will help to provide
access for women to air their views on breaking news that will be channeled
back into the conference through a daily page in the newspaper called "cyber
link.""This is an excellent example of African women using IT to bridge the
divide between north and south, women and men," said GL director Colleen
Lowe Morna. "It is e-governance at its best and is part of our ongoing
campaign to harness the Internet - that has often been used to denigrate
women - as one of the most powerful tools at our disposal for claiming
women’s rights."
The dialogues will start on the 2nd March and run for a week. The themes to be discussed are Women’s Rights, Economy and Sustainable Development, Gender and Governance, HIV/AIDS, Gender Based Violence, Media and Communications and Looking Ahead.
These initiatives are just a beginning, there is a massive amount of work to be done to get Africa online not to talk of other more life threatening issues to deal with. My point is two-fold. Firstly when women in America and Europe speak so easily about "women bloggers" and the sexism that they have to overcome they often fall into the same mindset as the men they criticise for excluding them by forgetting that there is a whole world out there that is struggling to reach the center and they need to recognise that and give all the support they can. On the other hand African women also have much to offer through the development of the communication technologies initiatives such as Gender Links.
an
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11 Comments so far
1. Negrophile
February 25th, 2005 at 8:35 am
A whole world out there that is struggling to reach the center.
Now all this talk of women bloggers, minority bloggers, bloggers of colour etc is great stuff BUT no one is talking about AFRICAN women bloggers, especially those blogging from Africa rather than the diaspora. If anyone’s voice is lost it…
2. Trish Wilson's Blog
February 25th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Black Women Bloggers
Sheelzebub links to a must-read post from Black Looks about black women bloggers. She wrote: “Now all this talk of women bloggers, minority bloggers, bloggers of colour etc is great stuff BUT no one is talking about AFRICAN women bloggers,
3. Pseudo-Adrienne
February 25th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Awesome post! I definitely identify with all of the crap we women bloggers, especially women bloggers of Color (I’m half-Black, half-White) deal with in the blogsphere. It’s one thing to be a woman with an opinion, it’s another thing to be a woman of Color with an opinion. And as for little boys who can’t handle women with strong unapologetic opinions and independent voices of our own…too f*cking bad! I don’t care about bruising some little boy’s ego, cetainly not some White boy’s ego. Women bloggers need to be ballbusters, and it’s time that women bloggers of Color join the fray as well.
4. Elayne Riggs
February 25th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
I guess I just assumed many African blogs, like many European and Asian and Central/South American blogs, weren’t written in English, so being fairly monolingual I never felt it worthwhile to seek any out. If you can point to a few English-language blogs written by women in Africa, I’d love to check them out.
5. owukori
February 25th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Great response from this post so obviously I need to be writing more of this. For Elayne / African and South East Asian blogs are very unlikely to be written in indigenous languages. There are so many languages spoken in Africa which is why Africans usually write in the language of their former colonizers. so check out the colonizer and you will find the language / English, French, Portuguese. As for where they are, I will be doing some searches over the next week and will of course post whatever I find. Until then you can always keep coming back to BLACK LOOKS.
6. blackfeminism.org
February 26th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Thoughts on African women bloggers
Didn’t know there were any — or rather, never thought to look for any — until George referenced this post on his site, Negrophile.
Now all this talk of women bloggers, minority bloggers, bloggers of colour etc is great stuff BUT no one …
7. Elayne Riggs
February 26th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Thanks Owukori! Please feel free to make suggestions in my blog’s comments section as well. Starting on Tuesday (the beginning of Estrogen Blogging Month) I’ll be talking about women-run blogs I’ve bookmarked as “Gals in Waiting” (such as yours) and am considering moving to my regular-reading pile. Even if they stay in my Gals in Waiting section, they might wind up in someone’s regular blogroll, so I hope to get some good discussion going on lesser-known women-run blogs…
8. Mama JunkYard
February 27th, 2005 at 3:30 am
Thank you for the track back you left at my site. There is a Kenyan Blog Webring and at one time there were probably more female members than there were male members.
I feel we do have a long way to go but slowly more of our women are turning to the blogsphere to voice their opinions.
9. Ilyka Damen
February 27th, 2005 at 3:56 am
Estrogen Week: Putting A Bow On It 2
I hope you’re all ready for your yummy estrogen-filled post featuring women bloggers from the left side of the political spectrum. I hope you’re all ready for your yummy estrogen-filled post featuring women bloggers from the left side of the…
10. Plum Crazy
February 27th, 2005 at 4:00 am
Estrogen Week: Putting A Bow On It 2
I hope you’re all ready for your yummy estrogen-filled post featuring women bloggers from the left side of the political spectrum. (Since I do know of more liberal female bloggers than Ilyka, I added a few.) Organizing Principles from The Sidesho…
11. mediagirl.org
April 1st, 2005 at 2:00 am
Democratizing the media one blog at a time
Who is “the media”?
Rad Geek’s kindly props to yours truly and DED Space (whom I neglected to mention in my excitement) for our ha