:: netwoman's blog ::

Whose Voices Get Heard? Gender Politics in the Blogosphere

Culture Cat posts here paper that she gave at a conference. It looks really interesting.

Here is the research question:
What do women bloggers experience in the blogging community as they define it, and how well are they represented in the most widely-read and linked-to weblogs?

One observation that Clancy made is that women have a "tendency to think that they do not have the writing talent to be a widely-read blogger".

She also has a useful chart that shows the linking practices of A-list bloggers - broken down by gender.

"As the results show, not one of the top ten most important weblogs is maintained by a woman. Women are represented in only two community weblogs, which are maintained by a community of men and one woman. In all cases, men greatly outnumber women on blogrolls. When understood in the context of blogging practices, these findings have negative implications for women who want recognition on a large scale. If the top weblogs are mostly men, and the weblogs they link to are also maintained by mostly men, it becomes difficult for women to enter the conversation. It should be noted, also, that the majority of women linked to by these bloggers are politically conservative, so the findings are even more disappointing for feminists and other left-leaning voices."

Thanks Clancy for posting this.

posted by Netwoman @ 12:31 PM