Tuesday 16 April 2013

Flunked


Using the Finkbeiner Test—created to suss out gender bias in profiles of female scientists—Melissa Dalgleish discovers that Canadian poets don't fare any better:
The title of Sandra Martin's piece was the first red flag: "The nurturing nature of Jay Macpherson." No mention of her brilliant poetic mind, her many awards, or Martin's own newspaper's statement, back in 1957, that Macpherson was Canada's "finest young poet." Indeed, no mention of the fact that Macpherson was a poet at all. Despite Macpherson's choice to remain unmarried and childless, Martin still manages to construct an image of her as maternal which trumps her professional identity, suggesting that her poetic output was small because "she was a ministering angel to waifs and strays, often to the detriment of her own work and health."

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