Penguins Walking Around a Jetliner

Is there any reason to believe that men and women are blogging in equal numbers? If so, then maybe you can blame sexism. But if there are a lot more men than women who blog, it makes sense that more of the popular blogs would be done by males.

In this case, it makes more sense to blame the cultural factors that make women less likely to contribute than to blame male bloggers for ignoring female bloggers. If you start doing that, you risk making a blogger's gender more important than the quality of his or her content. In a number of the blogs I read, I have no idea if the writer is male or female, but I keep reading because the content is good. Unless the content of the blog is really specific to women, I don't think it should matter who is typing it.

As for media coverage, you can't cherrypick one or two examples of reporters ignoring female bloggers and say there's some kind of systemic bias against women on the Internet. All it proves is that there are at least a few journalists who are ignorant, maybe passively sexist. While it may make sense to think that women are shortchanged, there is simply not yet any serious evidence to assert it.

Personally, I don't care about the gender of the blogger...only their posts and if they have interesting and thought provoking observations. One only has to look on the web and witness the deluge of blogs out there but very few are note worthy for me. I like quirky and interesting sites that provide detailed information on various subjects not only on one. I won't name my fav blogs here because I think it's best for one to look for them and be surprised. :)

Sometimes I don't even notice the gender of the blogger. Also, sometimes being a female blogger can help you get taken more seriously - like in the case of my wife, who got featured for actually because of her gender: http://is.gd/1fvC

No wonder Megan Carpentier isn't taken seriously as a political blogger-- she blogs for GLAMOUR, the magazIne that perpetuates the notion that shoe shopping and wearing cosmetics. are vital issues for women.

I know some intelligent women who blog and who are taken seriously, such as brainy, outspoken economist Megan McArdle whose blog, Asymmetrical Information, now appears in the Atlantic:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/ She's worth reading.

This is why Digby of Hullaballoo kept her gender hidden for so long. And let's not forget Kathy Sierra.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=14783

Greg H--this isn't about male to female ratios in the blogosphere; We're talking quality of writing, and even though some of the best blogs are written by women, they are passed over in news articles in favor of male bloggers of less quality.

Chad; So, being featured in a local free 'zine aimed at a very narrow market is the same as getting exposure in a national news article? "Skirt" Charleston is aimed at women. Of course it will feature female bloggers.

Maybe it's the signs that say Male Bloggers At Work that's got her down.

On very rare occasion do I notice the name of the person who wrote a bog. I think someone is making an issue out of nothing in this case.

Off the top of my head:

Amanda Marcotte, the horrible Michelle Malkin, the equally horrible Pam Gellar (Atlas Shrugs anti-Muslim bigotry blog), Jill Filipovic, Pam Spaulding, Debbie "Ask me why Muslims suck" Schlussel, Jane Hamsher, Ana Marie Cox, Jacqui "Ars Technica" Cheng, Xeni Jardin, Juliette "Baldilocks" Ochieng, Kathryn "K-Lo" Lopez, MISS CELLENIA, Lindsay Beyerstein, Garance Franke-Ruta, Roxanne Cooper, Rebecca Traister, Joan Walsh, Carol Avedon, Lauren Bruce, Tammy Bruce, "Hecate," Susan Hu, "Echidne of the Snakes," the politically confused but otherwise exceptional Beth "Alabama Pachyderm" Cleaver, Melissa "Shakespeare's Sister" McEwan, the criminally stupid La Shawn Barber, Sharon Weinberger, Elizabeth "The Anchoress" Scalia, Dr. Helen "Mrs. Instapundit" Smith, and on and on... And this list (with the exception of Miss C., Sharon W., Jacqui Cheng and Xeni Jardin) only covers political bloggers, left and right.

I read tons of blogs and I certainly don't choose which ones to "take seriously" based on the sex of the poster and I think the rest of the blog-reading world participates similarly. If Blogger X, regardless of his or her sex can maintain a schedule of engaging and provocative posts, then readers will flock to them. If they lose their edge and it starts to show in their work then they may lose some of their audience. I couldn't imagine a reader deciding that their favorite blog has gotten tediously boring but that they would consider the sex of the blogger in question as part of their decision whether to stick around or participate elsewhere.

Vive les bloggers féminins - même les wingnuts belliqueux parmi eux!

I read based on politics and information, not gender, or race, or any biting need to call differing ideologies names.

I'm a male blogger, been blogging for close to 3 years now and I think I'm not taken seriously. Most of my posting are often left uncommented while my female peers get tons of comments daily.

I don't think it is about gender. It is about how interesting your writing is.

Oh well, there's still a lot I can learn..

On the Internet, nobody knows you are a woman.

I don´t care about a blogger´s gender, nor people´s complaints about how they aren´t taken seriously.

How about writing better content instead of whining?

I don't generally care what an author's gender is, unless it's particularly relevant to the content of the post. I appreciate the variety of male and female bloggers whose posts I read every day, on all sorts of topics. I don't find that women are being marginalized in the blogosphere. The nature of the Internet provides the opportunity for everyone's opinions to be heard, and if you have something to say and say it well, people will listen and respond no matter who you are. Certainly I think it's a FAR more balanced forum than any traditional media.

Wow, Adam , you put me in some rarified company there!

But I came in here to say, no, female bloggers are not taken seriously. Neither are male bloggers.

no, gender does not matter in this realm. the internet is the only working example of the free market, and it should remain that way. there is no telling WHY male bloggers are taken more seriously, but if they are, then they are; it has nothing to do with their gender. there will ALWAYS be a majority of SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE. it is impossible to have a fair share of everything, especially when it's the people who are doing 100% of the voting.

the reason i believe men are taken more seriously is because they generally don't write solely about their feelings. women do. feelings do not generate populatiry, because EVERYONE has feelings. i think women might write more for personal benefit, where men write more for an audience. when you write for an audience, you try to get them involved with the content. now i'm not saying men are better writers, i'm just saying that they don't let their feelings generate their content. and that's OK with me.

the world may (still) be dominated by men, but women will always be better at balancing the checkbook.

Miss C:

I'm terribly sorry to have to have placed you in a list that also includes Michelle Malkin.

I'm not sure I like posting in the same comment section where Michelle Malkin was mentioned.

In order to boost my traffic, I've considered using a female identity and posting a profile photo of a hot babe. Not the kind of traffic I ultimately want, but just long enough to get better indexed by Google. I don't know whether male bloggers are taken more seriously than females. How seriously does anyone really want to be taken anyway? On the web, TRAFFIC is king. As a blogger, traffic is most important.

People blog about various things. Any blogger who wants to be taken seriously is probably just too serious. You have to post a lot and be relevant. Google can't tell a blogger's gender.

Oh yeah, I always take MissCellania seriously.

Stratoblogster, you were on a roll, but you lost all credibility with that last line!

I call bullshit. Some of the most successful bloggers are women: Gina Tripani of Lifehacker, Erin of Unclutter, Megann Marco of Consumerist immediately come to mind. I'm sure there are tons more I don't know about. Isn't one of the major contributors to Mental Floss a woman?

Awwww, thanks, Adam! ;-) (LOL @ "politically confused!")

Frankly, I'm tired of people hand-wringing over not being taken seriously. We're bloggers, fer crying out loud. And of course there are women whose major selling point on their blogs is (quite intentionally) their physical appearance, or more to the point, their sexuality. All while trying to be "serious." (Adam knows of whom I speak.) There are a lot of dudes who will read a blog written by a woman just because they like looking at her picture and imagining she's writing for THEM. It's just the way things are, on the internets and off. Not much you can do about it except keep the pics off the blog, or even do like Digby did (concealing her gender).

I do think there's a big difference in the political bloggers btw left and right, though; a lot of (but certainly NOT ALL) the prominent female bloggers write a lot about so-called "women's issues," with a focus on feminism. Like it or not, I'm sure it's just as off-putting to most men as dudes' blogs with soft porn pics all over them are to us. (That's another entire story, right there - some dudes post that sh*t and wonder why women feel like it's a no-girls-allowed zone? Duh!)

Anyway, I'm not taken "seriously," but then, I've been known to slip goatse links in my posts just because I thought it was funny. ;)
(Don't worry, I'm over that phase.)