Bloghercon, Exploring Gender Differences in the Blogosphere
Charlene Li discusses further the idea of a conference for female bloggers after seeing Lisa Stone’s post.
The commenters name many women bloggers and raise issues related to the gender differences. Are there differences between the way men and women blog? What are they? Why are there differences? Why do these differences matter? Are female bloggers not popular because they’re women or because of other reasons?
Our blog group’s membership and participation is mostly white men. There are usually at least four women at each meeting out of 10-40 attendees. I can think of maybe 10-15 women who have participated in the meetings in the last twelve months, but don’t necessarily attend meetings every week. The number of women has been increasing significantly lately. I know at least one woman in the group has young children at home who sometimes doesn’t attend meetings because of familial reasons.
I don’t think gender discrimination happens in our group. Some of the most admired people in the group are women. They’re valued for their intelligence, perspective, background, and experience–not just because of their beauty and charm ; ) –just as we appreciate the men in the group.
A while ago when we were discussing session ideas for a blog conference, a woman suggested a session on gender and blogging. Unfortunately, that idea didn’t go very far. It seems that in our group, some women thought the session would be valuable and some men didn’t think the issue was worth exploring. Another gender difference, perhaps. Maybe the interest in it is something we should keep in mind in case we do another blog conference.
I wonder how gender patterns in the blogosphere change in certain microcosms, like that of librarian/library, nursing, or even knitting weblogs.
I don’t care whether or not I’m on the big A-list. I don’t think I really want to be on that list. I write about topics that don’t appeal to the general population. What I care about is whether the 3700+ subscribers and readers find something useful, meaningful, worthwhile when they read my content. I don’t aggressively market my content or weblogs. Besides, all the cool kids are on the Z-list. Does not wanting to be on the A-list make me a woman?
Gloria Pan of The Media Center at the American Press Institute calls March Blogosphere Diversity Month. I guess this topic is entirely appropriate for Women’s History Month.
Addendum 3/15: One of the things I meant to mention in this post and forgot to is the demographics of Internet users. For years, white, education men have outnumbered other Internet users. It makes a bit of sense that they’d have more weblogs than other kinds of users just based on that smidge of data.
March 11th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
“blog conference, a woman suggested a session on gender and blogging. Unfortunately, that idea didn’t go very far. It seems that in our group, some women thought the session would be valuable and some men didn’t think the issue was worth exploring. Another gender difference, perhaps”
Yes, perhaps it IS a gender difference. Your comment that men didn’t think the issue was worth exploring is so incredibly typical of how women’s issues and advancement through history were dropped, slid off the table and left ignored.
I don’t believe that women are unable to blog successfully or even participate in a much larger way. But, I think that women don’t tend to push in the same way men do for attention and space.
March 14th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
You’re talking sense, j. I’ve stayed out of this one, largely because I think it’s a bit like the flame wars about bike paths that crop up every spring on my bike email lists; it’s intractable.
My take on the “why are so few women in the Technorati top 100″ is this: it’s just plain economics, the outside world playing itself out on the net.
You know all the stories about “X got fired for blogging?” Well, looking at the most recent stats from my 2004 Congressional factbook, a woman born in 1970 makes about 83 cents on the dollar compared to a guy doing the same job when she works; but lifetime, that woman is only expected to make 38 cents, because women take time out to do things like childrearing. I’m not debating the merits or demerits of that situation — but the fact of it means that there are fewer women higher up on the totem pole.
The lower you are on the totem pole — for whatever reason — the less likely it is you’ll have a public blog under your own name, and the less likely it is you’ll have the kind of linking behavior that gets you noticed — because you’re playing it safe, staying under the radar, trying to stay employed. I really believe that this is an economic issue, pure and simple, and not a gender or race issue.
As more jobs become “knowledge jobs”, more employers are going to realize that the workers own the means of production. Blogs are an in-your-face, googleable proof of that fact. And you better believe that many employers are, whether they realize the big picture or not — going to take steps to regain control over their workforce.
PS. Skiing was pretty good — a little Slurpee in a few sunny spots but otherwise very nice. I should have called before I left — Shimon et al bailed and so I decided to sleep a little later myself and didn’t even leave my house until noon.
Next time I’m just setting the time at noon.