Steven Levy has an article called Blogging Beyond the Men's Club in this week's Newsweek about the lack of diversity in the blogosphere as represented by a conference at Harvard. He points out that though there is a great diversity in the blogosphere, the top rung is homogenous. Even as he acknowledges this he doesn't really tackle the issue of how the definition of a blog plays into the exclusion.
There are at least 8 million blogs, but the ones that get quoted in the news most often come from this small circle who blog on current events, and who sometimes do investigative journalism. Representatives from this group were invited to the Harvard symposium on which Levy is reporting. To my mind they are begining to resemble the Astor 400, seeing themselves over and over at different events. It is a group that seems to believe itself engaged in defining a new set of ethics and journalistic standards for this new medium (if it is a new medium).
What about the rest of the blogosphere? Every week I read fantastic cooking blogs, design blogs, wine blogs, technology blogs (in fact Meg Hourihan who co-created blogger has a blog, as does Caterina Fake who co-created Flickr.com), and glance at a few parenting blogs. Gawker is edited by a woman, and she is not alone: there are financial blogs, publishing blogs, fashion blogs , blogs about writing, blogs about design and art, and blogs about sex and, blogs about dating. You name it, and I bet there are blogs written by women about it. Of the six personal blogs currently posted on TypePad's home page, three are by women. Most of these blogs are filled with exciting voices, good writing and in general much better punctuation and spelling than my posts often have.
So if women are missing from the blogosphere, they are missing from this small niche within the giant movement. This is important and it needs to be fixed, and it will be. Yesterday I read a post on Susan Mernit's (Susan - a woman whose blog people simply need to read, which makes me realize the paidcontent.org is also partly edited by a woman) blog about Bloghercon a new grassroot's effort to take on the Blogosphere and promote women. Enter the term on Technorati. High time for this but let's not buy into the idea that women aren't blogging.
I think the question is: how do we get these blogs recognized and quoted? Last week's blogads report showed a 25% and rising readership of blogs by women. How does one get that number up to 50%? I guess it is of no real use to rail against the term blog. But I wonder if the people who run knitty.com -- a great knitting site -- talk of their site as a blog, or a site, or a community, or even a knitting nation? Not to beat a dead horse, but would it help if we just called them sites? For what site, large or small, can justify not being a blog or having many blog elements? Would doing this really take away from the momentum? Isn't this a bit like private accounts versus personal accounts?
In the meantime, I have some ideas about how to spread what Steve Rubin talks of "link love" and I'll start by posting the names of some of the sites by women that have caught my eye in the past month. in the coming days.
