I’m so weary of your attempts to marginalize women writers online who happen to be mothers that I almost couldn’t write this letter. But I realized that if I didn’t, I would feel guilty about not trying to change things so that if my fourth-grader ever wants to be a mother and a professional, maybe she won’t have to fight this battle.

Was it really necessary to write a story on a professional blogging conference with the title Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy.  She’s Busy Building Her Brand? The headline alone drips with mocking condescension that says to the world that it’s perfectly acceptable to continue to belittle women for the exact same things that men are doing in the online world today.

We’ve come a long way?  Not.

“Girly-bonding?“  I suspect that when the Google guys get together, no one on the Times staff would dare to suggest it was anything other than a serious business meeting.  Hold an event where mothers do the same thing, and it’s instantly a hen party.  A “modern day coffee-klatsch?“  Really?  If I have coffee with the Kirtsy ladies or the MOMocrats it’s a “coffee-klatsch,” but espresso with Rick Sanchez about being one of the first bloggers on his now influential Twitter List would grab more of your attention?

I shouldn’t be surprised.  For decades, most of society has tried to push mothers to the side who want to work, achieve, help support their families or speak out on issues.   In the 1950s and 1960s, it was accepted for mothers to work for “pin money,” but society was skeptical of how allowing women into certain jobs would impact men’s control over the world.  It’s cute to look back through today’s Mad Men lens and chuckle about how amazing it was for the guys to allow Peggy Olson to become an actual copy writer!  It’s another, though, to continue in 2010 to find ways to suggest to the world that women who are trying to build careers and money-making opportunities, or who are using one of the few writing avenues available to them without any male barriers to entry, are somehow undeserving of respect for the simple reason that they’ve decided to procreate.

I realize your writer was probably trying to pen a humorous piece about a recent blog conference where women who are mothers (GASP!) gathered to hone their skills on search engine optimization, marketing and earning a living through their blogs.  Maybe you couldn’t get past the name Bloggy Boot Camp to see what women were trying to accomplish.

But was it really necessary to add that gigantic graphic to further make fun of us?

We’re still just about kids, toys, pets and coffee?

If you had written a piece about the heavily-male attended South by Southwest Interactive conference with similar “daddy” art, I’m betting you’d have gotten a pretty seething letter from those organizers.  Conferences like Netroots Nation are well-respected by the media.  Ones like BlogHer, Bloggy Boot Camp, and others are written about in terms where the you can feel the virtual pat on the head that says, “There, there dear.  Why don’t you just write about your play dates and leave the important political writing to someone else!”

To use faux humor and mockery to imply to millions of your readers that mothers clearly shouldn’t be out in the world trying to improve their families economic lives or their careers, and that we should be staying at home, tending to the kids and the man of the house, letting all those important conversations about building online businesses to the menfolk — you know, fathers like Guy Kawasaki and Markos Moulitsas — is pretty outrageous.

Of course, maybe it’s just because you’re afraid of what the future holds for the New York Times and that if you don’t smack down the competition, your failing business model will run out of gas sooner than you’d like.

It’s not just me. Other well-respected online women writers (I really prefer that term to “mommy bloggers”) are annoyed with your attempt to, again, portray women online as moms having a hobby rather than the professionals that we are.  Even the positioning of stories about women online shows your inner disdain — we get the fashion and style section;  SXSW and Guy Kawasaki get the technology or business sections.

I was also wondering — did your reporter bother to dig a little deeper with the women who attended Bloggy Boot Camp?  Did she try to find out how many attendees were women with professional degrees and careers?  It might be shocking to believe, but my online writing is my profession — I have over a decade of experience in broadcast journalism and practiced law for 15 years.  I make money with my “traditional” writing, have written op-ed pieces for newspapers,  am writing a book for which I have an enthusiastic publisher (no, don’t assume it’s a traditional “mom” topic — that will only get you into more hot water), and I’ve spoken at a variety of conferences you would deem worthy of respect.

And I’m a mother. And I’m not ashamed to incorporate my perspective as a mom into my professional writing.

I know that somehow in the vaunted opinion of the New York Times, my motherhood makes me somehow less worthy.  When I was a girl, I thought we would be past these motherhood stereotypes at this stage of the game.  But being sad won’t stop me from continuing to build my brand, my business and my livelihood online, even though you will probably continue in your antiquated and outdated ways of covering professional and political women.

My consolation is that every day there are more women writing online, creating businesses and building something tangible for their futures.  And that puts us one step closer to world domination.

Don’t worry, though.  We’re moms — we’ll be benevolent dictators.

Sincerely yours,

Joanne Bamberger, aka PunditMom

You can read my interview with Judith Warner about writing her new book, We’ve Got Issues at She Writes!

I had a great chat a few weeks ago with Amy Tiemann from MojoMom about our collaboration on the soon-to-be-released Courageous Parents, Confident Kids. (Don’t forget — you can register to get the e-book free for a limited time — just send me your e-mail adddress to joanne (at) punditmom (dot) com).

As for what others are writing, my fellow MOMocrat Karoli has a great reminder on just how evil Michelle Malkin is.

Fast Company has a great interview with my financial girl crush, Elizabeth Warren.

And Howard Stern?  Did you really want to go there about Gabourey Sidibe?  When was the last time you were nominated for an Academy Award?  And if you really want to go there on appearances, maybe you should take a good long look in the mirror.

This  book is an amazing source with advice from many women I know you’ve probably heard of in these parts, including Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann from The Motherhood and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner from MomsRising!  And the exciting news is that Amy and the other authors, including myself, are offering a free (yes, I said free!) e-book version will be available for a limited time before the paperback version of the book is released in April.  The chapters in the book include:

Introduction by the Editor, Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family.

Part 1: The Courage to Invest in Your Own Development

The Transformative Power of Self-care by Renee Peterson Trudeau, life coach and author of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal.

Tools for Career Reinvention by Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin, founders of Balancing Professionals.

Part 2: Developing Your Own Courageous Parenting Style

The Courage to Let Our Kids Solve Their Own Problems by Maya Frost, international lifestyle design expert and author of The New Global Student.

The Courage to Become Your Own Parenting “Expert” by Melissa Stanton, author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide. Visit Melissa at www.RealLifeSupportForMoms.com

The Power of Personal Significance for Kids of All Ages by Amy McCready, parent educator and founder of Positive Parenting Solutions.

I’m Worried I Worry Too Much, But How Do I Stop? by Jamie Woolf, leadership expert and author of Mom-In Chief.

Part 3: Real-world Safety Skills for All

Kidpower: Skills for Safety, Skills for Independence by Irene van der Zande, co-founder and Executive Director of Kidpower, Teenpower, Fullpower International.

How to Say Yes to Your Kids’ Online Activities by Linda Criddle, internet safety expert and creator of iLookBothWays.com

Part 4: Finding Your Voice and Raising It for the Community

Becoming a Political Parent: PunditMom on Mothers Raising Their Voices Online by Joanne Bamberger, journalist and founder of PunditMom blog (that’s me!) 

Building a Family-friendly America: Challenge and Progress Through the Eyes of MomsRising.org by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder and Executive Director of MomsRising.org

It Takes a Motherhood by Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, co-creators of the award-winning online community, TheMotherhood.com

If you want to get a free e-version of the book, send me your name and e-mail address to joanne (at) punditmom (dot) com no later than April 15, and I’ll make sure you receive an E-mail with the information to access the E-book on April 19!

But I still miss the late Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan. As for financial regulation?  Do we really have to go over this again — just call Brooksley Born, Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair.  Oh, and I call dibs on that ambassadorship to France!

Aside from whether the summit was more serious policy discussion or brilliant political stagecraft, I have to put the obvious question out there — where were the women? You know, the women who make the bulk of the health care decisions for their families?  The ones who make sure all the insurance paperwork gets submitted?  The ones who fight to find health coverage for their families when a few ear infections and a broken bone get a whole family labeled uninsurable because of “pre-existing conditions?”

Sure, there were some staffers in the background and an expert or two wearing skirts.  But other than that — not so many women lawmakers, at least compared to the sea of older white guys.  Of course, when women only make up about 17 percent of Congress, it is sort of hard to have them represented at the table on anything — there just aren’t enough of us!

I’m sort of surprised that the media noticed at all.  Dan Rather commented in a back-handed sort of way:

“If more women were in the room, might the debate have been different? If there were more women in Congress … might our politics be less rancorous and might our elected officials get more accomplished? There’s a school of thought that is emerging that suggests the answer is yes.”

A school of thought?  An emerging suggestion?  The funny thing about that remark is this — no one is screaming at Dan Rather for making such a wild, crazy suggestion that women might run things differently and get us different results!  Yet, when Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter essentially suggested the same thing recently, she was crucified by the  far right for being a sexist!

Fortunately, one Congresswoman spoke up at the summit.  Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) reminded us that when women aren’t included, how an entire issue is viewed becomes skewed.  And she wasn’t just talking about politics — she was also referring to medical studies that are relied upon in treating women that don’t include women in the studies!

Unless we’re willing to do something about it, though, neither of these phenomenon — lack of inclusion of women in medical studies and too few women in Congress — will change.  I know it’s hard to step up to the plate on that one, but surely there are more women out there with the intestinal fortitude to go “woman a mano” with the guys.

As for the substance of the discussion at the health care summit, can anyone confirm that this is what the Republicans proposed?   It wouldn’t surprise me — this idea costs the government nothing, supports the business lobbies and would stimulate certain aspects of the economy!

Photo, Getty Images

So much of our writing gets labeled as “chick lit” and “mommy blogs” — shorthand for ‘isn’t that cute that those little ladies think they have something to say, but leave the important task of serious writing to us menfolk!’

Just when I think that maybe we’re making a little progress, a new report comes out to snap me back to reality.

The trend doesn’t seem to be waning — the 2009 Top 10 Books of the Year list from Publisher’s Weekly contained no women authors.  How is that possible?  Of all the excellent books written by women, not one ends up on the Publisher’s Weekly list?

Not even Olive Kittredge, by Elizabeth Strout which won the Pulitzer Prize, made the list?

Op-ed pages are filled with men — fewer than 17 percent of opinion writers in the major newspapers are women.  With such a small number, you’d think the media would have their eye out for a few more women.  The Washington Post doesn’t seem to be too worried about it –  the winner of its Next Great Pundit Contest was a man (two women were in the final three) and the newest addition to WaPo editorial page is Dana Milbank — another man (though maybe they were trying to slip one past us, since I know plenty of women named Dana, too).

And the most recent addition to this sadly growing list — the editors chosen to compile the 2010 “Best of” volumes from Houghton Mifflin– short stories, American essays, travel writing, among others – All. Men.

Sure, there have been women editors for these compilations in the past, but this year’s announcement is just more evidence that there are just too few women’s voices acknowledged in writing today.

So what is there to do?  Do we just keep writing and hope that the people in charge will eventually notice?  That doesn’t seem to be working out so well.  I like the idea of making our own lists, but they’ll only get so much attention since they’re not the established ones — at least not yet.

It seems the only answer is to get more women into the positions where they will be the ones calling the shots.  Or we could try a different approach — don’t forget about the woman blogger who pretended to be a man so she’d get taken more seriously.  Maybe that’s the way to go?  Is it too late to choose a pen name?  Perhaps  “P.M. Blogger?”

Of course, there are plenty of exceptions (thank you Bright Sky Press and MojoMom!).  But in our ADHD world that loves anything on a list and tends to overlook the things that aren’t given the imprimatur of bestiness (I’m channeling my inner Rachel Maddow!), the combination of how people characterize women’s writing and where it gets placed in our award-loving world, is important for how our work is considered.

My ten-year-old daughter thinks it’s cool that her mom is a writer and, at least at the moment, she wants to be one, too.  I’d love to be able to give her some encouragement that things will be a little different when she starts her first book!

This journey is our first return to China since we brought PunditGirl home and made her part of our family in 2001.  I really can’t believe it’s been that long, yet I also feel like it’s been a lifetime  since we stepped off the plane at National Airport, our lives changed by a baby who spent the first year of her life in an orphanage with about 100 other children and about eight caregivers.  We’ve talked for many years, as our PunditBaby grew into a PunditGirl, about the amazing things we saw and experienced in January of 2001 when we brought our daughter home from Hunan Province.

I keep trying to come up with the usual PunditMom fare to write about in these days before we get on that 15-hour flight, but with the pressure of a book deadline fast approaching, as well as this trip of a lifetime almost upon us, it’s hard to focus on the health care summit, financial regulation or any of that other stuff that usually gets me all riled up!

So I’ve decided not to fight it, and to give in to the need to write about the trip.  PunditGirl can hardly contain herself as we are finishing up our preparations — getting our visas, buying a snazzy new polka-dot suitcase for her, and thinking about how much rice (her favorite food in the whole world) she’ll be able to eat while we’re there.

And I’ve promised myself, I am buying that Mao watch this time!

But there’s much more on everyone’s minds.  PunditGirl has confessed that one reason she’s excited about this trip is the fact that for the first time in her life she will be surrounded by people who look like her.

“Now you and Daddy will be the ones who look different,” she’s repeatedly told us, her chest puffing up with pride at the thought of a whole country full of people who share her skin tone and facial features.  We’ve made many efforts to make sure that her world has Asian friends and families in it, but our neighborhood is not the most diverse in the world, so for better or worse, she sees many more Caucasian people than Asian.

Aside from her apparent joy at being the one who will not look different from everyone else,  there’s also a good dose of anxiety that’s showing itself.

“What if China Mom and China Dad show up and decide they want me back?”  A question full of so many things — the longing for her birth parents to take back a decision they made ten years ago, the need to know that , as her parents, we would never allow anyone to take her from us, and the age-appropriate fantasy about what her life would be like if she had grown up in the country where she was born.

Yes, we’ll be doing the tourist highlights — the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terra Cotta Warriors, and the panda preserve.  But we’ll also be spending a few days in the city where we met her.  We’ll visit the baby home, though it’s not in the same building as the one she lived in.  We’ll see the babies who are there now and waiting for parents, though today, almost a decade after we adopted PunditGirl, more Chinese families are being encouraged to adopt these children rather than Western families.  And, if all goes according to plan, we will be able to visit with the woman who was the head “ayi” (nanny) when she lived there, and who brought PunditGirl (then known by her Chinese name that translates as ‘eternal river’) to us, dressed in worn but clean clothes that we had to return so another child could get some use out of them.

I’m anxious, too.  As an adult, I’m logically able to understand the historical reasons that so many Chinese girls have been available for adoption.  When I look at PunditGirl’s face or watch her wake up in the morning all warm and snuggly from her sleep or watch her race across the soccer field determined not to let the boys outrun her, I can’t imagine being the mother of any other child.  But I know for her, no matter how much she nods and says she understands why China Mom and China Dad couldn’t keep her, I also know that the thought remains in her head, “But maybe they could have if they’d tried a little bit harder.  Maybe they would have kept me if I’d been a better baby.”

I’m bracing myself for the possible emotional fallout of these thoughts colliding with the reality she sees in China.  PunditGirl has struggled with questions about attachment and permanence — I’m not sure if this trip will help heal those issues or exacerbate them.  But in my heart and my gut I think this is the right time to make this first journey to where she was born — to see the baby home and possibly to visit her “finding place” (I think I’m going to need more tissues than I can carry with me for that moment).

Right now, we’re trying to keep it light — talking about whether she can play the games on my iPhone on the plane, wondering how far up the Great Wall we’ll be able to hike, what it’s going to feel like to hold a baby panda (yes, that WILL be our holiday card this year!).

But I feel the low level anxiety starting to creep in for all of us.  I have half of a Xanax left from a procedure I had last year.  That’s definitely going in my carry-on.  After that, I’ll have to find other ways to keep my emotions under control so I can help PunditGirl with hers.

Photos by PunditMom, copyright 2001, 2008, all rights reserved.

Photo of Mao watch courtesy of ChinaSprout.

If we stop talking about costs, profits, regulation and party politics and focus on the stories of people who are sinking as a result of the insurance mess we have now, maybe we could find a way to take care of each other.  Lately, I’ve been avoiding Keith Olbermann’s special comments, but this one struck a nerve and I hope it somehow resonates with a few people in that room at Blair House as they’re putting on a nice show for the American people.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Finding a way to take care of our families and friends when they are sick so we don’t all go into bankruptcy.   As I say sometimes — yeah, I’m all crazy like that.

I was looking for a little political humor today and came across this snippet from Ricky Gervais — only he can take Hitler and Nietzsche and turn it into any sort of laughter.  (You’ve been warned).

Uncomfortable humor, at best.  But it should probably give us pause about our words.

But those sly Kirtsy ladies Laurie Smithwick and Laura Mayes had been taunting me and teasing me for a couple of weeks beforehand about the “surprise” they had waiting for me.  They wouldn’t give me any hints about it other than to say I needed to be at the Friday night event featuring the photography of so many women I already knew, both in real life and online.

I knew none of my attempts at arty photography were included, so I wasn’t sure what was up.

As any good friend, I dutifully listened to their admonitions (I wouldn’t have missed the party anyway!), and made my way to the event — Mom 2.0 Defining a Movement Art Exhibit.  This is what I found waiting for me:

In addition to displaying the amazingly moving and beautiful photography of many of the attendees, they also had commissioned a variety of new pieces of art work that combined work of incredibly talented artists with the words of bloggers, including my own.

I was moved beyond words and could not believe these women — who are my friends, my colleagues, my muses and my heroes — had decided to honor me with this amazing work of art.

Needless to say, there were a lot of tears involved.  Fortunately, you can’t see them in this photo that Sarah took!