The Politics of Male Blogging

This week as we looked into the Perseus Study, which David Weinberger linked to in his excellent post "When Blogs Get Really Popular" to find out that "56% of hosted blogs" are created by women.

Connect that with Dana Blankenhorn's interesting post on Corante called Everybody Wants To Rule The World and his assessment that the most striking thing one might notice when reading Blogstreet's 100 Most Influential Blogs is how many are about politics ... call me crazy, but isn't the MOST STRIKING THING rather that in a new technology dominated by women so few women are in the list? This would be like reading a list of the Most Influential Civil Rights Leaders and not having any African Americans in the top 100. Imagine a list that read "Lyndon Johnson, Bob Dylan, Robert Kennedy, Joan Baez," and on and on. Martin Luther who?

And if African Americans complained -- would they be taken seriously? You bet.

Play my parlor game, -- out of the 100 Most Influential Bloggers, how many are women? There are a number of blogs on the list with which I am not acquainted, so it makes it difficult for me to count the women, but here's my guess. 3?

Which, of course, gets us to the definition of "influential" and Blogstreet's algorithm for determining who is influential. They say it is based on who blogrolls whom. I will email them today to ask about this in greater detail. If you look at some of the most influential blogger's blogrolls, they all have women listed. Many have the same women listed -- so how is it that none of these women are on the Top 100 list? Women like Shelley Powers, Virginia Postrel, Mena Trott, GnomeGirl Cheyenne, Jeneane Sessum, Elaine Kalily, Asparagirl, Esther Dyson, Karlin Lillington, Elizabeth Spiers, Reverse Cowgirl, Denise Howell, Moxie, Betsy Devine, Xeni, Susan Mernit, Jennifer Balderama, Amy Wohl, Jenny (Shifted Library) Levine, Elizabeth Lane Lawley. I am throwing this list up in no particular order -- actually referring to the top 5 male blogger's blogrolls. [If I forgot you, remind me.]

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 inviisble and I want to know why. What are we doing wrong? Are we not publishing our blogs in RSS? Are we not promoting ourselves enough? Are we not expressing ourselves clearly? Our footprint is illegible, although our actual influence is not inconsequential. If you take a look at the list of women above, there are a few pioneers listed who could actually be considered founding fathers ... whoops, I mean, founding mothers, no, ... well you get the idea.