Today’s meeting about copyright and copying at Bergen Kunsthall (“deledagen”) has been critisised for only having male presenters (in the BB mailing list today, archives are subscribers only). The organisers answer that they asked two women who couldn’t come, and they pull the standard line, you know, “Vi kan ikke /lage/ kvinnelige debattanter, de m selv stille opp.” (We can’t /make/ female debaters, they have to turn up themselves.) So knowing that it is hard as an organiser or editor to find and catch contributors from outside of one’s own circle, I’m trying to think which women in Norway should have been asked. Any suggestions?
I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, author and professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. I co-direct the Center for Digital Narrative, a 10-year Norwegian Centre of Research Excellence, and I lead the ERC project Machine Vision in Everyday Life. This site started as my blog in October 2000.
Cassandra
If it’s O.K. for a male to comment, I believe one can begin to better understand many of the male-female issues, after reading “Brainsex”. As its male/female joint authors say, there’s nothing new in it. It merely pulls together, in an easily read form, a range of material which is usually ignored, but is essential to anyone wanting to understand current “difficulties”.
Jill
Oh, I hated Brainsex. Except the bit that said that I was better at multi-tasking because I’m a woman 😉
Watching my daughter and her classmates I’ll agree there are differences between men and women that probably aren’t merely to do with socialisation – but socialisation certainly increases the differences, and I do think that a balance between genders and perspectives is desirable in discussions…
It’s not easy to ensure such balances though. (Nice to see you again, Cassandra 😉