Thread by @RichardHanania

Yesterday I mentioned that Asian ethnic activism tends to be very female dominated. Got a lot of attention, and since this is a fascinating question, I decided to do a bit of research and see if I could confirm my suspicions. 1/n

First, here's the banner of the Asian American Journalists Association. I count 10 women and 4 men. 2/n

Here's the board for something called "Chinese for Affirmative Action," what I get when I google "Stop AAPI Hate." There are 20 names, when I couldn't tell sex I googled the person and looked for a picture. I came up with 14 women and 6 men. 3/n

The board looks to be mostly male though, which under rules of liberalism makes them sexist. 4/n

Found something called "Asian Americans for Equality." Here's their board of directors. 7 out of 9 are women. 5/n

Found something called "Asian Americans for Advancing Justice." Many of these people don't look Asian, but regardless, there are 22 women and only 2 men. 6/n

Next is the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. We have 7 women and 4 men, and the only non-Asian of the group appears to be a man, so we can say 7:3 ratio. 7/n

I'm going to quickly check some ethnic activist groups to see if this is true for all ethnic activism, or it's just Asians. First, UnidosUS staff has 11 women and 3 men, so it's actually similar. 8/n

Next is Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund Board of Directors. 6 women and 5 men. 9/n

Looking at the staff of the same organization, not just the board, I get 13 men and 7 women. So we don't see the absolutely lopsided numbers we see in Asian activism here. 10/n

Next I move on to the most famous African American organization, the NACCP. Among senior staff, I count 10 women and 7 men. 11/n

That's all I feel like looking at tonight. In sum, we can say Asian American activism is very heavily female dominated (70%-90%). Tentatively, we can say black and Hispanic activism has more women, but the numbers aren't so lopsided, though the sample of groups is small. 12/n

Ok, just realized I can also look at Asian members of Congress. There are 10 AAPI women, and 8 men. If you look at East Asians alone, depending on how you count it's about 9 women and 2 men. Note that Congress as a whole is only about 25% women. 13/n

If I was going to explain why, I’d say

1) Politics, and ethnic activism, requires confidence, and American society provides more of that to Asian women than men.

2) Liberalism is seen as more “feminine” ideology, and Asian men feel insecure about masculinity, so stay away.