That's right, the women are smarter

David Weinberger echoes Halley Suitt in asking why there are only three women among the top 100 blogs listed at Blogstreet:

Halley wonders why maybe 3 of the top 100 bloggers are women:

It’s clear that the top male bloggers are not denying women their blogroll inks, for the most part. It’s clear that the top male bloggers take every chance to list women bloggers and engage the topics that they raise. These men are too smart not to take us seriously. We are their colleagues, friends, girlfriends, sisters, bosses, moms, daughters. They want the best for us. Guys, feel free to blogroll us anytime.

Still we are almost invisible and I want to know why. What are we doing wrong?

I doubt the women are doing anything wrong. But something is not right. I’m aware of the usual things that lead to gender inequality, but I honestly don’t know why it’s showing up so strongly in the Top 100 (aka the “A-List”). Is it a function of the broadcast model since, as Halley points out, “56% of hosted blogs” are created by women.” Or is it the fact that even the best-intentioned men can’t full exorcise their inner pig? Or both? And more? I don’t know. [Joho the Blog]

Looks like Liz Lawley and her posse are on the case:

I’m delighted to announce the debut of a new weblog on the topic of gender and technology: misbehaving.net We’ve got a really amazing group of women participating on this site: danah boyd Caterina Fake Meg Hourihan me (Liz Lawley) Dorothea Salo Halley Suitt Gina Trapani Jill Walker We all believe it’s important to begin changing the public perception of women in the context of technology, and that one of the best ways to do that is to make women’s accomplishments, writings, and contributions more public and visible. I hope you’ll add the new site to your blogroll and/or aggregator list!… [mamamusings]


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4 responses to “That's right, the women are smarter”

  1. Rayne Avatar

    Which brings to mind a question: Has Shirky’s Power Law been tested by gender?
    Does the adoption curve of women to blogging look like the adoption curve of women to the internet?
    Is it possible that weblogging isn’t built to support the style of offline networking that women typically build versus the offline networking that men build?
    Food for thought…I know while working on building an intracompany community of women we worked hard to provide what men had, but built for women, without being exclusionary. Men just networked without conscious effort, but the network was quite different for that reason.

  2. Rayne Avatar

    Forgot to add: http://ringsaround.net/blogsbywomen/
    Take a poke around Ringsaround.net — there are a LOT more blogs by women. I suspect my questions are germane.

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