Wednesday, July 14, 2004
From an article in St. Paul's Pioneer Press:
Clancy Ratliff, a student of rhetoric and feminist studies, is studying the Web logs of mothers for her doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota. Ratliff said she got to thinking about how Web logs that discuss the Iraq war and the upcoming U.S. presidential election — often written by men — get as many as tens of thousands hits a day, but that the Internet audience is not as wide for the women who write online about politics in a more personal, everyday-life kind of way, such as parental leave policies of corporations.
"People may think, 'Oh, this is just someone's blog about changing a diaper,' but these are women who are using blogs to have a voice in the public sphere, to get their opinions out there," Ratliff says. "It's a pretty powerful thing for a lot of women."
In a way, these blogs are documenting everyday history: "These people are talking about the daily work of motherhood," Ratliff says.
And I got a plug, too.
Clancy Ratliff, a student of rhetoric and feminist studies, is studying the Web logs of mothers for her doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota. Ratliff said she got to thinking about how Web logs that discuss the Iraq war and the upcoming U.S. presidential election — often written by men — get as many as tens of thousands hits a day, but that the Internet audience is not as wide for the women who write online about politics in a more personal, everyday-life kind of way, such as parental leave policies of corporations.
"People may think, 'Oh, this is just someone's blog about changing a diaper,' but these are women who are using blogs to have a voice in the public sphere, to get their opinions out there," Ratliff says. "It's a pretty powerful thing for a lot of women."
In a way, these blogs are documenting everyday history: "These people are talking about the daily work of motherhood," Ratliff says.
And I got a plug, too.
