Where Are All the Lady Bloggers?

Jane Hamsher, Digby, Arianna Huffington, Joan Walsh... Who do we pay attention to seems a more appropriate question.
I don't care what the gender percentage is, but I do care about quality and fact-checking. There may be a huge percentage of male bloggers, but I only pay attention to a handful; and the handful of women I just mentioned.
I really don't believe there is a glass ceiling to be broken here.

The fact that women dominate networking and men dominate blogging is perhaps a reflection of the fact that women are often more extrovert in personal contacts than men.
Could it be that the private nature of blogging (you speak to the world but you don't see it) gives men a safeguard and conversely acts as a barrier for women?
It would be interesting to know if the situation is the same in other countries. Having lived for more than 20 years in France and Germany I realized coming back to the US how "retarded" with respect to gender equality we are.

When I instituted a blog about six years ago, it began with three women contributors who were more involved in its production than I was. We began with the premise that we should make sure that every fact was verified and the writer was fully identified. One of the women received a malicious and threatening telephone call that was answered by one of her children. She decided not to blog any more, and the other women decided to identify themselves with pseudonyms so that they and their families could not be targeted or attacked in their homes and workplaces. The attacks continued, however, on other blogs. The matter of blogging and discussion boards were constant points of discussion. One of the women made the point that blogs were like sleazy biker bars that decent people just don't patronize. Eventually, all the women that contributed decided that blogs were the province of the malicious and scurrilous and generally contributed nothing productive or positive to information and discourse. Many men have the same opinion and consider my blogging as a form of slumming.

Four of the women associated with the blog eventually left the state of South Dakota, and they all told me that their experience played a large part in their decision to leave. While the attitudes and verbal actions they witnessed on the blogs represent a small minority, they do reflect and influence attitudes that define the community. The women say they utilize forms of communication and discussion that demonstrate no tolerance for the insane excesses of malice on blogs and moved to communities where they feel that they and their families receive a larger measure of respect and security. -

Up above, Nicholas Eckert makes the point that given an entry barrier of zero, the real question is, "Why don't women *want* to blog?"

Indirectly, the author and commenter David Newquist each suggest that women are too fragile to blog. David in particular says that two of his female blogging counterparts were just so put out by the awful language that they *left the state.*

Marian actually asks, "But is there something we especially love to hate about vocal women that gives them more reason to pause before broadcasting their thoughts in a blog?"

One is compelled to ask, in the Internet vernacular: Are you fucking kidding me?

Do women bloggers get more flak somehow? Certainly not. This approach gets you no closer to answering your question.

The underlying assumption is that women in general can't take the foul language, the threats and, well, that's basically the extent of the abuse that the Internet can dish out. That's it. Unlike a biker bar, there's no chance of getting hurt. None. But emotions run high about politics and whatnot, and people have to hash it out.

But women can't take it, you're telling me? If that's what you mean, then say it. Don't blame it on awful, mean commenters and their hurtful words.

Personally, I think Jessica Valenti can take it.

is usually a man's, in my experience. It's no different in the blogosphere.

During the Democratic primaries, I was attacked in the comments of several of the "big name" blogs merely because I was a woman supporting Hillary Clinton. I can understand why some women would be fed up with that kind of juvenile response when you try to have an adult discussion on the issues.

For me, writing my own blog is quite empowering, and indeed I often think of it as my duty to get my voice out there. I can take it, and so can the majority of women I know. But the effort involved in trying to get your opinion heard in a society that does not value women as figures of authority is perhaps something that many men cannot understand.

For centuries is has women writers have struggled to have their work taken seriously in male dominated field. I'm not sure that this century is any different. As a female blogger, my feminist side says that this may very well be true. I am also curious about the quality of content from male and female bloggers alike. I look forward to following this idea and to see how it turns out.

There is no huge "we" with particular feelings about anything and this type of sweeping generalization, while convenient shorthand for journalists, is conceptually ridiculous.

Apparently some individuals, presumably guys, don't like feminist bloggers at all and post inappropriately. Is this surprising? Are guys who post appropriately supposed to feel gender guilt for the behavior of others?

Does that mean all women should feel guilt for the anti-social behavior of some women? Wouldn't that be ridiculous self-flagellation?

Let's give up on the sweeping and misleading generalizations about men and women. Hope for change resides precisely in the fact that they aren't all the same, never have been, never will be.

John Deverell

How did Technocrati define who is a blogger? How did they take their sample? The blurb mentions professional bloggers as the focus this year. These questions matter, because I want to be sure that the initial data given actually reflects the correct presence of women who blog. For one example, most blogs on parenting are by women. Where they sampled? Did people self-select into the study?

My blog turns six years old this coming Sunday, and I have Blogged As A Woman from the very beginning. And what a ride it has been! Mostly great fun and lots of work. But I respectfully disagree with those who view malicious trolling as something women and men receive equally. Women get more of it, as shown by a study on female-sounding usernames .

Whether this is the reason for fewer women blogging (if they do) is unclear, but it is important to understand that the nastiness levels do differ by perceived sex of the blogger.

How can you even talk about women bloggers without taking a look at BlogHer? That you failed to do so tells me you didn't dig very deep. Also, what you miss is this: There are many thriving networks of women bloggers, around which millions of women congregate. Other not-women-specific networks, like the Daily Kos, attract a healthy proportion of women as well. That women are participating all over the place is right in front of your eyes, but maybe not necessarily as "bloggers." That in and of itself is a huge development.

IIRC Technorati is only the self-proclaimed judge of the "blogosphere" (and for their own purposes of promoting their own advertising network). They are not, by any means the ultimate be all and end all blogging authority - they just sell themselves as such. They only look at those who sign themselves up for their indexing service, or link to those signed up. So it's a self-selecting survey sample. Most female bloggers don't go in for the inherent chest-thumping and self promotion required to show up on Technorati's radar. Yet somehow many get tens of thousands of hits a day, lucrative advertising deals, book deals (how many male bloggers have ended up on the NY Times Bestseller list?), and media appearances. And hundreds, sometimes thousands of commenters on any given post.

When I see some statistics from actually objective sources like Google, Blogger, Wordpress, Yahoo, etc. then I'll believe it. Samples from other ad networks, or blog aggregator services (like BlogHer.... that's where a lot of women are). Dismissing female bloggers on the basis of Tecnhorati's research makes about as much sense as looking at the subscription list of Sports Illustrated and declaring "Women don't read magazines".

This is a total bullshit post. Kevin Drum *used* to ask this question. Now when he does, Drum gets mocked and lambasted by the same feminists bloggers.

"Thanks for reading, and keep the discussion going!"

and then be accused of playing a game of "more feminist than thou" one-uppage?

No thanks.

For Michael and Marian, who both believe that photos are not important, what do you think of the cover of this week's Newsweek? http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2009/11/tongues-will-wag.html

1) A number of women bloggers write about politics one post and then are off on what they ate or something else the next. That's fine and I read those posts and enjoy them. But they really aren't political bloggers.
By contrast, a woman like C.I. of The Common Ills (http://thecommonills.blogspot.com/) blogs about Iraq every day, several times a day.
Technorati shows C.I. has "Authority: 508" and I won't highlight the other women I compared her to but their scores were much lower and they tend to be women who blog about politics one moment and then some other topic the next.
So I do think it goes to are you covering the political topics or not? And how often?
2) The Mother Jones post rightly points out that women in all professional fields of writing are generally in the minority. I do think that's reflected online because of the
fact that women tend to do online what we do offline. (That's true of me and my friends. Sorry, if that's not true of you and I've misrepresented.)
3) Some women make themselves a joke and I'd include Cox in that. I cringed at the photo choice not because of sexism in the photo -- alleged or real -- but because it was her. For the record, I don't think the photo was chosen for sexism. Cox is a famous/infamous blogger and she would be the first choice for most of us if we were asked to think of a female blogger.
4) I don't think there's any support for women bloggers. Jessica of feminisiting is boo-hooing again? I don't care. I don't care for her circle jerk blog that bans women and that refuses to promote women.
5) In fact, put it on Jessica. She has a bad blog but it's a popular one. Notice how she doesn't push women bloggers, she doesn't promote them. She's got the same blog list she had two years ago and more or less the same as in 2005. Blame it on women like that who do nothing to promote other women.
6) And blame it on the men who make Jessica's site their token link which makes women look incredibly vapid to any man attempting to find out what 'serious' issues we think about.