I've thought about this a certain amount, and while most of the "explanations" for why the blogosphere is the way it is make some sense, I think there is something about the "style" of the blogosphere that is just more appealing to men (and white men at that) on average. And before someone complains that "I'm a woman and I like it just fine" that's beside the point. There will always be exceptions, but I still think the women and minorities who get the most from the blogosphere are those who can think--and write--comfortably in the style and mindset of the white male blogger.

What kind of environments are more female-centric? I dunno--maybe something like "the View?" Of course then we'll have a bunch of women chiming in about how much they hate "the View", but again, that's not the point. Those women are already exceptions because they like the blogosphere.

Maybe the next question is, if one found an environment that was more female friendly, or at least neutral, would it be perceived as inferior to the male dominated environments? History says yes...

It's too bad the blogosphere is so much less diverse than the mainstream media, which, as I'm sure you know, is, like, TOTALLY diverse!

Why is the blogosphere expected to be any different than any other area of American life? Males dominate everything in this country, including Ms. Goodman's editorial board. Sounds like another attack by the MSM on those dirty bloggers to me.

Just to be clear -- there are more female bloggers than male bloggers. The blogosphere is perfectly female-friendly. It's only the *political* blogosphere that, at least for now, is dominated by white males.

YKos and BlogHer have different agendas. It's likely that the political nature of YKos attracted MSM attention; while BlogHer features a politics track, the conference is actually about blogging.

On the other hand, I have a hard time understanding why 800 women bloggers isn't more newsworthy, period.

JMS, you really want the political blogosphere to be more like The View? Whatever its politics, that show is utterly brain dead. I think your proposal would put the cause of feminism back about two decades.

I want to expand something along the lines of what Kristy is saying. What is your definition of "political blogosphere" and does this definition specifically exclude a large swath of female bloggers?

Is a blog like Feministing considered a social blog or a political blog? I am sure that there are other examples out there....but a well rounded demographically rich blog may cover a variety of issues *including politics* and not be considered a political blog (and therefore those demographics are not included).

Goodman writes about one theory of why the demographics shake out this way, "[Gina] Cooper thinks one reason for the demographics is that educated, economically comfortable men were the early adapters to the technology and took the lead." The problem is, now that the technology is more accessible, it is also more mainstream, and therefore dominated by a lot of the (male) personalities that dominate the MSM.

Another thing I would like to point out something that the above quote implies, but does not expand on. The early adopters staked the claim to the territory. They have learned, adapted, and in the meantime became popular.

It can be tough to break into the political blogging mainstream, not necessarily because the "establishment" is so firmly entrenched. That is part of it, but I think that there is a larger, unaddressed, phenomenon involved...it involves people like me. To break into an entrenched political blogosphere that early adapters have staked claim to, one needs to find their niche and thrive. I have never attempted to create my own personal blog let alone a political blog mainly because the issues on my mind have been adequately addressed within the current blogosphere One cannot create a niche when that area has already been staked out and a new blog really doesn't add much to the discussion. Instead of creating a new blog, I am perfectly happy contributing to existing blogs by sending in news snippets (sometimes with my own comments), and by posting comments on various different blogs.

Just theorizing, but many of the women could be perfectly happy by living in the comments to some of the more popular blogs than creating their own blogs. Just picking two examples, women like Digby and emptywheel spent their early internet life in the comments sections and/or diary space of places like DailyKos. It wasn't till later when they had the confidence to strike it out on their own.

Finally, I can argue that many political voices (and demographic statistics) are lost/drowned out because of the structure of the political blogosphere. I can create a diary on Kos, TPM Cafe, OpenLeft, MyDD, Huff Post, and a variety of different policitical blogs. I could make sharp, interesting, and possibly breakthrough diary entries...but NEVER be included in the demographics that Goodman talks about. This is why I don't see the demographics changing significantly anytime in the near future. The blogosphere is too complex to be described by the looking at the main writers on the "top blogs"...in depth analysis of the complete political blogosphere is not conducive to the type of fluff and sound biteiness that columnists like.

(sorry for the long post, but I just kept thinking of things to add :) )

"I still think the women and minorities who get the most from the blogosphere are those who can think--and write--comfortably in the style and mindset of the white male blogger."

Well. It seems to me that much of the political blogosphere is filled with ideological bloviating. This serves a purpose because the liberal-left perspective has really gone missing in the MSM since blogging came to the fore. So, that's not a bad thing.

But I'm not convinced that the style of intellectual discourse that I see coming from most women (outside of some aspects of feminism) really fits that model. Because women are required to be twice as good as men in order to succeed, they tend to develop a more reflective perspective and tend to work harder developing that perspective.

This medium does not really support that kind of engagement. For that reason, I spent a lot of time really fulminating against blogs. I've since opened my mind about it a little bit, in order to investigate, but my opinion about the kind of forum it tends to provide hasn't really changed.

Kay,

Ellen Goodman asserts the existence of a 90-line spreadsheet "proving" the stats she quotes, and that's enough for you? Maybe the blogosphere is male-dominated, but c'mon! Let's see the evidence before we go off the deep end.