{"id":2572,"date":"2011-04-04T20:32:33","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T01:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2011-04-04T20:32:33","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T01:32:33","slug":"mama-wpen-do-women-shy-away-from-clout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/04\/04\/mama-wpen-do-women-shy-away-from-clout\/","title":{"rendered":"MAMA W\/PEN: Do Women Shy Away from “Clout”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This post is crossposted at She Writes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This month I was a nominee in Babble\u2019s Moms with Clout contest<\/a>. \u00a0In the end,\u00a0Sausage Mama<\/a> won, not me.\u00a0 But the whole enchilada got me thinking: What is \u201cclout\u201d?\u00a0 And why do so many women have trouble owning theirs?<\/p>\n

My dictionary defines clout as \u201cpower and influence.\u201d\u00a0 Synonyms include \u201cpull,\u201d \u201cauthority,\u201d \u201csway,\u201d and \u201cweight.\u201d\u00a0 In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.\u00a0 To an overwhelming degree, it still is.\u00a0 (See the depressing stats here<\/a>.) Women, however, are mixing it up.\u00a0 At social networks like She Writes, where authors promote one another and not just ourselves, at game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project<\/a>, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, \u201cclout\u201d is being redefined as something more communally achieved.\u00a0 But even in the push for collaborative clout, and particularly among women, the tension between the one and the many remains. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I know this tension personally.\u00a0 I experienced it this past month as I emailed my friends to ask for their vote, then opted against posting the request at She Writes or at my group blog,Girl w\/Pen<\/a>.\u00a0 It just didn\u2019t seem Girl w\/Pen-y (or She Writes-y) to promote myself just for the sake of winning an iPad 2 (the prize).\u00a0 I meticulously checked to see if any other of the 30+ nominees were She Writes members, so that I could shout us out collectively, as my colleagues in leadership at She Writes and I agreed that that would be the right way to do it.\u00a0 But since they weren\u2019t, I let it go.<\/p>\n

In the end, I mildly regretted not saying something about it in the forums available to me\u2014forums, heck, I\u2019ve helped\u00a0create<\/em>. \u00a0I admit: I wanted that iPad! \u00a0I would have put it to good use, downloading e-books and apps and learning about the new forms all our books might take as I work toward my new project (The Pink and Blue Diaries<\/a><\/em>). \u00a0But as early as day 2 or 3 of the contest, I quickly learned that I didn\u2019t want it that<\/em> bad. \u00a0Just as I couldn\u2019t bring myself to harass my non-She Writes friends and followers more than once (ok, twice), I felt that promoting myself here for commercial gain would compromise the spirit of the community.\u00a0 It felt like a conflict of interest, you know?<\/p>\n

And that, exactly, is the problem.\u00a0 Not just my problem, but women\u2019s more generally I fear.\u00a0 Are women collaborative, at times, to a fault?\u00a0 In putting the community above ourselves, are we losing out on opportunities to enhance not merely our pocketbooks but our careers?\u00a0 After all, winning a contest like this one is not just about winning an iPad.\u00a0 To say you\u2019ve won a contest breeds\u2026clout.<\/p>\n

And why should we care about clout?\u00a0 Love it or hate it, fact is if you want to be a successful writer these days, clout matters. \u00a0It\u2019s no longer the merit of our work but the reach of our platform that gets us the goodies. \u00a0Clout has been a social media buzzword for \u201cinfluencer\u201d or \u201ccommunity leader\u201d for a while, but interestingly, now it\u2019s also a website, complete with metrics and scores.\u00a0 Klout.com measures \u201coverall online influence\u201d through an algorithm that determines exactly how much influence someone has over their social networks.\u00a0 In a Klout score, numbers mean nothing; \u201ctrue\u201d influence means more.\u00a0 (Come on, you know you want to, so go for it:\u00a0check your Klout score here.<\/a>) Will publishers start looking up our clout scores, like they look up our previous book\u2019s sales in Book Scan?\u00a0 Who knows.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I am not alone in my hesitation.\u00a0 But nor do I necessarily think that\u2019s a good thing.\u00a0 In an article for a Canadian parenting site, top blogger Ann Douglas<\/a> explores the dark–or rather, the ambivalent side–of making the top “mommyblogger” lists, while Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother notes in a post at her own blog<\/a> that top blogger and clout lists can be a source of bad feeling in the mom community, leaving those not listed feeling badly.\u00a0 \u201cI think, to that extent, they\u2019re a little problematic,\u201d Connors says, then adds: \u201cI think it\u2019s interesting that we worry about\u2026whether feelings get hurt and the community spirit gets undermined\u2014when this kind of discussion would be pretty much unthinkable in almost any other sphere.\u00a0 Does anyone talk about Forbes<\/em> business rankings making men feel bad?\u201d<\/p>\n

Um, no.<\/p>\n

And that brings me back to my main concern: I was flattered to be nominated in Babble\u2019s \u201cMoms with Clout\u201d contest.\u00a0 In the end, I couldn\u2019t do what it takes.\u00a0 I find it interesting\u2014and problematic\u2014that I am so comfortable writing this post after<\/em> the contest is over, revealing my ambivalence, but wasn\u2019t comfortable asking for your vote.\u00a0 Either I am being too ladylike, or simply not woman enough.<\/p>\n

Attention GWPenners in the NYC Area: Join me, She Writes, and The OpEd Project for a joint Happy Hour<\/a> in Manhattan on Sat. April 16!<\/em> And for a break from all that clout-making and clout-sharing, come recharge at the mini-retreat I\u2019m leading<\/a> for writing mamas with Christina Baker Kline on May 21 in Brooklyn.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is crossposted at She Writes. This month I was a nominee in Babble\u2019s Moms with Clout contest. \u00a0In the end,\u00a0Sausage Mama won, not me.\u00a0 But the whole enchilada got me thinking: What is \u201cclout\u201d?\u00a0 And why do so many women have trouble owning theirs? My dictionary defines clout as \u201cpower and influence.\u201d\u00a0 Synonyms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21107],"tags":[21195,39268,1598,3109,868,21941],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mama-w-pen","tag-blogging-life","tag-book-publishing","tag-community","tag-motherhood","tag-power","tag-writing-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}