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March 14, 2005
Where are the Women Bloggers?
Chris Nolan has recently posted a insightful entry on the media's perception of the lack of women bloggers in response to Newsweek article on the subject. Chris lists the obvious culprits - blogging is a new technology medium adopted by techies who are mostly male, men like to read blogs by people like them, media covers political and tech blogs that are mostly written by men, etc. My favorite reason of Chris' is her number 4,
4)Anna Maria Cox. She's prettier, younger and more entertaining than most other writers – male or female -- on the web. And she spends most of her time writing about sex. Her male readers – and that's her audience, trust me on this – think that's really cool. It's a cheap trick but it builds an audience. Since she's got an audience, Big Media think of Cox as "the" girl blogger. Since they've got one girl blogger in their rolodex, they don't think they need any more. Particularly since she's pretty and she talks about sex which makes them all feel better about how bloggers aren't really a serious threat to Big Media.
I must say I find Ms Cox's Wonkette silly, vapid, and a complete waste of time. She enjoys writing about who's screwing who on Capitol Hill and picking apart politicians. So what?
Chris comes down pretty hard on the NYTimes' Maureen Dowd. I don't share Chris' objections; I agree with Maureen. In my experience most women want to be liked, and don't have or want to cultivate the thick skin required to keep from taking attacks personally.
What is missing from the discussions so far is that the vast majority of the million or so bloggers in the world could care less about the A-list bloggers. Yes, the top 50 blogs get a lot of traffic, but that traffic is nothing at all compared to the amount of traffic going on amongst the 7 million other blogs (7.8 million as of today, see technorati). Chris Anderson had a great article about this in his discussion of the Long Tail in Wired last October.
With the rise of easy-to-use blog services such as Typepad, MSN Spaces, LiveJournal, AOL Journals, and Blogger, one no longer needs to be a web designer in order to write a blog. 67% of LiveJournal bloggers are women. I would bet that Typepad and MSN Spaces are drawing even numbers of men and women. The techie web tools such as Movable Type are predominantly used by men (see MT Demographic Tidbits) but these tools have only a fraction of the use of the blogging services.
Actually, one of the most popular bloggers on the planet is Heather Armstrong of Dooce who just won a Bloggie for Best American Weblog, Best Writing of a Weblog, and Most Humorous Weblog. Heather is hysterical; a potty-mouthed Dave Barry, but funnier. And, speaking of the Bloggies, if you review the award finalists, women are quite well represented in almost all if not all of the categories. In the rapidly growing food blogging community, women bloggers probably make up 80 percent of the total.
So perhaps men have been dominating the blogging scene in its infancy. That will change. The flip side to the Larry Summers controversy (president of Harvard who implied that men are better at math) is that women are better writers. Women like to talk more than men, they have more extensive social networks (read: more friends), and their brains are more wired for the language arts. (I assert this knowing I will piss some people off. Too bad.) Blogging is a natural medium for women. Just give it time, you'll see. I predict that women will lead in Long Tail. Maybe not the top 50, why? Perhaps because most of us would rather talk to our friends than be "opinion leaders" to thousands of people we don't know. Just a guess.
p.s. Chris Nolan has one of the best political blogs out there. It's the only one I have the patience to read.
Update March 22, 2005
Microsoft has an interesting note on its website regarding why women blog:
Why women blogBlogs can keep families and friends abreast of a baby's birth, provide updates on a loved one's medical condition, make wedding planning easy, and create a sense of community.
"Women plan weddings, conceptions, adoptions, detail pregnancies, and work through grief and divorces in blogs," said Rennick. "Everything women get together to talk about one on one or in a group, they blog."
Tracy Kennedy, a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, believes that there are clear differences in the blogging experiences of men and women. "Women tend to write more personal diaries and accounts of their lives, whereas men often do not—it's more about circulating information."
Posted by elise on March 14, 2005 to Social Commentary
| Comments (9)
Comments
Your a much more interesting person than Ms. Cox... but unfortunately, you don't blog enough on here! Perhaps less recipes and MT tips and more girl blogging? :)
Posted by: Charlie O'Donnell at March 16, 2005 6:25 AM
Hi Charlie, well you've now discovered the meaning of the name of this weblog, "Not Always On". :-)
Posted by: Elise 
at March 16, 2005 1:57 PM
It's a funny world we live in. You can make statements about women and their proclivity towards writing and communication skills (which I agree with) and no one gets upset or raises an eyebrow. Meanwhile Larry Summers can't apologize and grovel fast enough for his suggestions that men might have a more natural inclination for the sciences. What a PC world!
Posted by: Scott at March 23, 2005 4:02 AM
God I LOVE blogging, it's changed my life!
Funny how I came across your blog, I was using a creative brief template you'd designed and linked into you. hello! Your template is very useful!
Do check out my blog where I spend time talking about, um, errr, conception and weddings...
Posted by: Emma Jane at April 5, 2005 3:08 AM
Where are the women bloggers? Good question. I do not use my blog to gush about my children or my sex life. That's way too personal for me. But I'm sure there is an audience for that.
Posted by: Elsie at June 4, 2005 11:48 PM
I am a teacher and very new to blogging but as I was browsing, majority of the blogs that I found meaningful are created by women bloggers. It is my wish that all educators use web blogging as a tool in integrating technology in the classroom. Could you just imagine how much traffic that will create?
Posted by: Maria at June 8, 2005 12:17 PM
i know only my opinions... the blogs i like the best, the ones i read the most, are from women bloggers. because i'm a woman? likely. there are only a small handful of male written blogs that i like. (and my fave male written blog is from a friend who's gay, so go figure that one out...) i wish there were more male blogs that kept my interest.
i don't believe that we're better writers, whatever better means. or that we're more prolific, either.
the women i know who blog are actually sharing their lives with their readers. with few wonderful exceptions, i'm not finding that in male blogs. i guess i like reading about those lives.
Posted by: Skirt at March 12, 2006 7:09 PM
I'm a woman. There are lots of women on my blogroll. Most of the women I link to have women on their blogroll.
I'd consider myself a political blogger (although I do mix it up with personal anecdote, occasionally). Could it be that, for reasons of voice, the men and the women are clustering?
I know MANY women who blog, and many more are having "conversations" on livejournal and the like. I wonder if the disparity is perhaps that men have been better about making their blogs "relevant"? Or seen as economic opportunities?
In my city, the main blogger calling attention to blogs is a man: many of the conferences are innundated with men. On some level, I take myself less seriously than that - although, perhaps, I wish I didn't...
Anyway. I'm not sure that it's a lack of writerly women so much as a lack of attention paid. Of course, as I said, I may be wrong - not having seen anything but pundits saying "where are all the women", and me saying "Um... Here?"
Posted by: Skirt at March 12, 2006 9:17 PM
I thought the majority of bloggers would be woman. Maybe the men think they can snag a date with Anna Cox. It really makes no sense why they would only read one blog written by a woman.
Posted by: Mary at March 14, 2006 6:10 PM
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