It seems that Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe is concerned that too many rich, white males are overshadowing women in the left sector of the blogosphere.
I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring...An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the "coed" mix was overwhelmingly male. And, not surprisingly, most male bloggers linked to male bloggers.Ok, she may not be wrong about this....maybe the blogosphere as a whole is dominated by men. A feminist would be bothered by that. Then I began to wonder, as this complaining seems to be a gender equity, if we'll see any discussion about the fairness doctrine in the blogosphere.
I'm not sure what criteria were involved in creating a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs (I'd love to see that list).
Ellen, check out this blog and Intellectuelle.
2 comments:
HAH! I laugh, because Ellen Goodman's complaining is just that--laughable. What would she like to see, equal numbers of male and female bloggers? Unrealistic. Consider that most perceive blogging in general as a "technohobby" of which only a portion of the internet savvy would care to participate. Narrow it down to politics, and only the political junkies scour the news everyday for the latest dish out of Washington. Of them, how many are women? Not many, and out of those, how many would care to maintain an online running stream of consciousness about it? Hmmm...that seven percent is looking like, not surprisingly, how many women might care to blog.
As we listen to another drum beat of the feminist song of unequal representation, we might look at appreciating all the people who made blogging software possible. Would we find even seven percent of them female?
I’m all for women getting in the game, and the blogosphere certainly isn’t a men’s club. How many would step up? Personally, I have a problem with too many people blogging Seinfeld style. I also struggle with the need for myself to start a blog, but hate the idea of having to maintain it. As with most women, I surmise, blogging eats up valuable time and energy and suffers short bursts of interest followed by long lags of boring content. God only blesses some of us with the ability to write decently. I'm of the opinion that the rest of us should keep our keyboards silent most of the time (not excluding myself when it applies!)
*Letitia*
I have fairly decided that my first blog entry will be about how much I disdain blogging. But for the greater good of thinking women everywhere, more blogs written by Christian women with solid grounding in theology need to go online everyday. It is a numbers game, partly. The more blogs that exist in a particular category, the more clout and respect the entire category receives. So blog on, and look for mine whenever I finally put my virtual pen to virtual paper. :)
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