I expect most of you have watched Mrs Doubtfire, a film in which Robin Williams dresses up as an old lady so that he could see his children. It is an amazing film. But the sad thing is, sometimes situations like this do occur where one has to pretend to be of the opposite sex so that they can see their children, have a good career or just make some money online.
I was reading Copyblogger today and was introduced to a story which I find absoloutly sickening, it involves a woman that has had to use a male pen name just so she could afford to put food on her children’s plate. As you can see from the quote below, the only reason why she as struggling to make any money was because she had a female name. Disgusting!
Taking a man’s name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service.
This reminded me of Britian’s first female doctor, Margaret Ann Bulkley, who pretended to be male for over 50 years. Why? Because women were not allowed to become doctors. Margaret did not let that stop her, so she attended Edinburgh University under her disguise of James Barry. No one knew of this woman until 1865, 46 years after she became a medical officer in the army.
That was over 150 years ago, after everything that has supposdly changed in our society why does it still need to happen? It shouldn’t, thats for sure.
James Chartrand runs Men With Pens, an amazing blog that has successfully “made it big” in the blogosphere. If you do not already visit it often, and have it on your RSS list, then now is defintely the time to start!
Great post.
I always find it odd that a site that appears to be run by a man is on paper more likely to succeed. That said though, just look at dooce.com and huffingtonpost.
Mind you judging by your ranking your doing well too!
Anyway I have taken enough of your time, great post and site, keep 'em coming
That is very true, some women do very well and they are the ones that I knew about, it is people like James that no one knows about because they had to go under a pen name. It is awful and I had no idea it is still happening.
On a lighter note, thank you for your comments about Success Circuit. I could have the best site in the world but it would mean nothing without a good community so it really is people like you that take time from your busy schedues to read Success Circuit and to comment with such well thought out comments. So, Thank YOU!
FYI, Huffington Post had a male/female contributor ratio of 10 to one for its first year. I don't know what it is now, I stopped reading it for that reason. But Arriana Huffington knew exactly what she was doing when she created that ratio: there's no way the blog would have been taken as seriously, or perhaps at all seriously, if she had an equal numbers of female and male contributors. Or, more female contributors than male. In that case, it would have been invisible among media pundits. But you know what? That's no excuse for the extreme imbalance in contributors, especially considering it is a political blog all about furthering justice, equality, and… well, anyway.