Where Are the Women Bloggers?

I have a blog.. it's mostly business related but I do every now and again do product reviews and add a little personal information.

Our blog gets approx. 9,000-10,000 hits per month. I don't really promote our blog other than having a link from our main website and putting the url on all business correspondence.

I am listed on blogexplosion but I simply don't have the time to do anything with that.

It sounds to me like you are looking for more personal blogs (?) which mine isn't.

Rebecca

I heard a rumour that the Seattle Writergrrls were going to add a blog roll ... it certainly makes sense that they would, since they are an Web-based community of writers.

http://www.seattlewritergrrls.org/

Hey Sonya,

Interesting topic. I replied on your blog, but I'll jump into the discussion here, since blogging is becoming my specialty.

I agree that most blogs I see are written by men, and something interesting to me is that the blogging coaches (such as myself) I've heard from and found online all tend to be women. What's THAT about?

Okay... I am going to be a crazy fool here and actually answer the question of:

Where are the Women Bloggers?

With blogher.org *which by the way, has the slogan of

Where the women bloggers are. Over 7100 of them.

Be afraid. Very afraid.

M'kay. This may just be a projection of my own view of the world...which is a little slanted, I must admit. I am inclined to think that there are less women bloggers for the same reason that there are less women radio shock jocks. Also, I personally find blogs to be just too much to keep up with, there's an endless supply of them and they don't transport well into a car ride, etc, where I could multitask with other things.

It seems to me that women are just less motivated by self promoting know-it-all solo ventures and more motivated (and even empowered) by knowing that their thoughts and feelings are shared. I think feelings are poorly rendered via words, and even less well rendered by text.

All of that said, I am personally VERY motivated by the idea of getting a bunch of women together in person, over a shared interest, and transcribing parts of their in-person conversation into text blog. Maybe that would be both more fun for women and more compelling to read for others.

.02

-Cere

I totally forgot to mention that a good place to start collecting might be my Business Blogger's Chat Group. It's open to both genders, however, it might be a good place to start a community with whoever is blogging within Biznik.

Hi Sonya,

You might take a look at "BlogHer - Where the women bloggers" are (http://blogher.org)

BlogHer runs a series of national conferences for women bloggers, and has received quite a bit of press. Several thousand blogs by women are listed there, organized into topic areas.

--Karen

There are a good number of niche sites developed and ran by women. Blogher is really the most established, and I think that female bloggers are typically able to write better on an emotional level of communiction; so they tend to write more on personal areas of interest.

I think that many bloggers don't categorize themselves into gender. There are a lot of bloggers that I don't even know gender after a few months of reading detailed posts, and in many of those cases I am assuming that there are a good number of female writers. Most of the industries that I have seen are filled with a lot of female bloggers. However when I was at the latest blog business summit the majority of the crowd was 85-90% men.

The larger numbers from big portal sites like Myspace and Facebook indicate that women are equally represented on most blog platforms.

If you really want to create a kick-but ladies group, I will volunteer as the single male blogger in the group. I tend to make an excellent dart board. ;)

And here are a couple of Bizniks with a "Chat With Woman" blog...

http://biznik.com/members/?name=Pam_Gray

DD

Quite frankly, this question drives me crazy. Why does it matter.

Really?! Do you read women's blogs or men's blogs more often? Or do you just read a blog because of the content.

I actively write a marketing blog called Kinetic Ideas (http://www.wendy.kinesisinc.com) and I actually wrote a post about this subject.

Feel free to read it: http://wendy.kinesisinc.com/?p=135

Best, Wendy Maynard

I think it depends upon where you look.

Some of the very top political blogs are by women; Huffington and Wonkette on the left and Coulter and Ingraham on the right.

Cute Overload is generally ranked in the top five blogs on the planet and is done by a woman.

Michelle Malkin and LifeHacker are another top 20 blogs written by a woman.

Actually, if you look at http://2007.bloggies.com, there are lots of top women run blogs.

Maybe it's the second level blogs that have become woman-lite.

I am a woman blogger, and I left a comment on your blog about this topic. I have found a lot of other women bloggers on Blog Catalog.

I'm a woman blogger as well. I mostly write about administrative issues that potential clients could use. I also post genealogy information. My blog can be found at:

http://www.cmjoffice.com/blog

My blog is awakeningbusiness.com/blog I guess I think of a blogger as someone who blogs a lot and regularly. I am more sporatic and find that it is a big energy commitment to do it well. I have had to make priorities and although I enjoy writing on people's blogs , and I know it is a great way to promote my business, I have had a challenge scheduling it in. What is a blog coach?

There are some incredible blogging women featured at http://www.designers-who-blog.com/

Hi Sonya,

Good initiative. Thinking of starting a blog of my own soon. Once done, will be glad to join your venture...

-Anita CM

Sonya - you certainly have the right to start any kind of group/site that you like, but I personally have no desire to participate in a place where I qualify because of my gender. I'd much prefer to participate in something where I was selected because I was saying interesting and useful things.

Gender-based sites/blogs don't interest me much. Compelling content does!

Women in computing and the Internet is a perennial topic at the conferences I attend and speak at. The blogosphere is a meritocracy (for good or bad) and women have to get out and blog. There's certainly way more than "back in the day."

An interesting parallel is that Gen-X woman are more successful in the workplace than men (I don't have any stats to back that up, other than my circle of friends). Where the men have spun off into their own ventures, or stopped climbing the ladder, women have more responsibilities as managers and execs, combine that with being Moms, managing the house and I think they just don't have the time.

Also, how many women are as egocentric as men? Blogging and social media reward the biggest egos.

BizJam bucks the male-dominated trend that you see at a lot of mainstream conferences, in that we've got 13 women and 12 men speaking at this year's conference. One keynoter is male, the other is female. So we have achieved essentially equal numbers for this conference. Without event trying. Really. We didn't give a second thought to whether someone was male or female when we were deciding who to invite - it just worked out that way. Which I'm thrilled to see.

Great topic: women and blogging.(Side note: Dan, that's amazing. 13 women and 12 men without a conscious effort to get to those numbers. That's great!)

I don't know if I agree that it takes an egocentric person to be in the bloggers' hall of fame. I do know, though, that it takes transparency, an attitude, if you will, and yes, someone who is not afraid to express opinions that may not always be in the mainstream.

If you look at the switch from the network evening news and Walter Cronkite to the current cable programs—O'Reilly Factor, The Colbert Report, etc., it's the end of "information" and the beginning of advice and opinion, big time. And men are still prevalent in most of this new media. I think women are just coming into their own in the area of assertiveness with social media.

Basically I agree with Wendy. I also look for good content in a blog and don't necessarily care whether it's a man or woman. Case in point: I subscribe to Sonia Simone's Remarkable Communication blog because she is smart, funny, thought-provoking, even irreverent at times, with consistently excellent posts. But it is not because she is a woman.

I have never blogged so how do I get started....women blogging sounds like it would be a good place for me to jump in......