What Are Your Thoughts on the Differences Between the Male and Female Blogging Exerience?
Next week I'll be at the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference, where I will be doing a half-day pre-conference session with Janet Clarey on using social media to get the most out of the conference and a Social Media 101 session later in the week. I'll also be participating in a panel discussion on Women Who Blog with Janet, Cathy Moore, Kristina Schneider, Christine Martell, and Emma King.
I have my own thoughts on what it means to be a female blogger, but I'm interested in hearing from all of you about what you think. Some of my questions:
- Do you think there's a difference in how men and women blog? If so, how would you characterize those differences?
- Do you find that you learn different things from male and female bloggers?
- We all know that there are more men than women blogging, at least professionally--any thoughts on why that would be? What could we do to encourage more women to blog?
- Should we even be talking about the issue? Do gender issues in blogging have any relevance to our professional practice?
I'm interested in hearing from both genders on this, so don't be shy! Drop me a line in comments or if you reply on your own blog, leave me a link so I can find it. Looking forward to reading your thoughts!
I don't think there is a difference in male and female blogging persay. I think the issue primarily derives from personal vs. business blogging. I keep two blogs, one for my work and one for my personal life. They don't often overlap although at times they have.
Two things I find interesting - 1) I definitely have just as many female bloggers as male bloggers in my RSS feed and 2) there are quite a few "personal" male blogs I follow.
I'm not sure if this is indicative of the entire Internet (as if :) or just me being a female techie.
I found this study interesting on gender, age and blogging http://lingcog.iit.edu/doc/springsymp-blogs-final.pdf
Posted by: Bethany Smith | September 16, 2008 at 10:23 AM
Quite some time ago, I came across a discussion of presenters at professional conferences. I did my own "study," comparing the gender ratios of an ed tech conference and an ISPI conference. Based on first names and some photos in the relevant brochures, the tech conference presenters were more than 70% male; ISPI had almost a 50/50 balance.
No conclusion, just observation.
Posted by: Dave Ferguson | September 18, 2008 at 05:30 AM
Michele, gender is an interesting concept. I typed that with a wry smile.
How about a little experiment? Select four blogs. Two with female authors. Two male.
Extract a post from each. Ask your audience to indicate which is male, which female.
Of course, a Google phrase search will allow people to cheat. This test should be done live with real people in a room.
Should we even be discussing this you ask? I remember that gender has come up before in the blogosphere.
Is it an issue? It should not be. Imagine how tedious the world would be if there was just a single gender of beings.
Posted by: John Larkin | September 19, 2008 at 08:58 PM