Sexism, however we define it, is still a problem. And we reckon it always will be, in a fallen world. Still, a great variety of metrics show that women in America are now doing better than men in an impressive range of areas, from educational achievement to career success. But we’ve tended to overlook perhaps the most revealing indicator that American women have achieved unprecedented forms of equality, namely, the pettiness of the complaints.
We present to you the latest paper on the cutting edge of social science: “Twitter Makes It Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias.” According to the authors of the study, male political reporters retweet other men three times as much as they retweet women. We have neither the time nor the inclination to inquire into the soundness of the study’s methodology, but we wonder how many people needed to be told that social media tend to confirm users’ biases. Sexism is but one ingredient in the hemlock cocktail we like to call Twitter.
“Women operate at a disadvantage,” the study’s lead author, Nikki Usher, told Vox. “The power to control the dialogue is still in the hands of men.” No one, however, seems to have looked qualitatively at the “dialogue” on Twitter and asked whether it’s worth controlling. Another reading of the study might suggest that female journalists, unlike their male colleagues, aren’t a bunch of pompous jackasses alternately trying to flatter and outshine each other.
