Comments on: Blog Gender Theories

By: [i:rrhoblog] » links for 2007-03-18

[i:rrhoblog] » links for 2007-03-18 — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 22:17:48 +0000

[...] Gender in Blog Participation I began to wonder whether guys males felt more comfortable with the whole commenting thing and/or whether females tended to respond better to other forms of blogging activities and invitations (tags: blogs bloggen bloggerInnen gender genderblog web2) [...]

By: Europe A La Carte Blog » Blog Archive » Why do there appear to be more male than female bloggers?

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:20:52 +0000

[...] I decided to do a bit of research. Problogger has made similar observations but on a larger scale than me. In a online poll of 799 site visitors, 72% of respondents were male, 28% female. When they analaysed the gender of the 300 people leaving comments in one month, 90% were male and 10% female. [...]

By: Nene Contreras

Nene Contreras — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:27:19 +0000

Hi Problogger,

Please pay particular attention to the time when the posting were done.

Do you know that in this day and age of so called emancipation and empowerment of women, they still are expected by the society and by their familes and husbands to take care of household chores. So women who are working, women who have children and who have to do most of the shouehold chores have barely time to sit on a computer to blog!

Cheers,

Nene

By: Patricia Müller

Patricia Müller — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 05:05:48 +0000

I have to agree with Simonne, and this is a very very personal perception (my being a web designer being part of the equation too): I think the overall look and feel (or maybe in a wider sense, “presence”) of this blog screams “male”. I’m a female and I read the blog just as much as many other women do, the topics interest me, but I have a feeling (added to other reasons already given by other commenters) that the topics you write about interest more men than women in general (even though you have plenty of female readers!) and when women are here, they might have the feeling that they are in a predominantly male environment – the look and feel, the topics, the commenters themselves, even you… Then, when something like a group writing project like this one comes along, allowing “them” to post in their own blogs (their own environment), I guess women feel more comfortable contributing. I don’t know, I’m thinking out loud here, I could be completely off, but just my 5 cents anyway..

By: Simonne Matthew

Simonne Matthew — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:31:46 +0000

Hi,
I am a heavy reader of this site, yet it took me a long while to get accustomed to it. The layout was not appealing to me at all. I remember the first time I came here, I tried to find someting useful but it was so much text all over the place, that it was quite impossible for me to figure out why this blog is so popular. I think it was the third time I came when my attention was catched by a post. Then I spent many hours reading and I keep on coming back every few days to check what’s new.

As a conclusion, I believe the layout makes female audience rather stay away (as I noticed on other blogs a lot of comments written by females and I spotted also great blogs written by females).

By: links for 14 July 2006 at disambiguity

links for 14 July 2006 at disambiguity — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:16:13 +0000

[...] Blog Gender Theories: ProBlogger Darren Rowse recently conducted a poll on his ProBlogger site to determine the proportion of male/female readers. In this post he considered what the resultant stats and the m/f balance in commenting might mean re gender and blogging (tags: gender_theory blogging) Share or Save this post:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

By: Jay Gilmore

Jay Gilmore — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:35:41 +0000

Off topic but a real pet peeve of mine is that when we are talking about humans the appropriate gender terms are men and women or man and woman or boy or girl. Female and male is a non-specific adjective for all species of animal and some plant life. Please, lets use human terms for humans.

(end mini-rant)

P.S. Don’t worry about the age thing as most children or young people will and do figure out what category they fall into.

By: Bright Meadow » Sunday Roast: sitting in the back of the class with the safety scissors and the glitter

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:04:28 +0000

[...] It almost wouldn’t be a ‘Roast without a link to Darren. This week we have two! Oooh, I do spoil y’all. Firstly, an article on the gender differential in blogging sparked my brain into working. As a female blogger I would say I have noticed more men out there than women, but I’m used to that from the field I’ve been working in lately, so it doesn’t seem too unusual. That in itself got me thinking on a whole host of things that might work themselves into a post in the near future. With regards comments I know I have a reluctance to post comments. It’s something I’m trying to overcome, but whether that reluctance is just personal reticence, or because I am female… Well, therein lies an entire PhD all to itself. [...]

By: Anita Rissler

Anita Rissler — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 00:03:31 +0000

Darren, I very much like your interest in getting to know more, experimenting in your blogs to find out better ways, doing surveys, inviting feedback etc.

This little study of gender differences is beautiful and it seems to me that you have received some very important answers already in the comments.

Of course there are complex reasons for the sex differences you find. I was not surprised, though. But I think that some of the very important answers are here already in all of the interesting comments given.

1) Very many more males than females use their time for blogging – this is so all over the world. And I think statistics say that females prefer communites to blogs. Consequently, more males are likely to read blogs and maybe also more likely to be prompted to comment in blogs

2) For women, family, children and paid work in combination are time-consuming – there is not much time left for leisure surfing and active comment writing – even if we would wish so

3) There are sex differences how we communicate, take initiative in conversations and take turns in real life discussions – the same probably also applies to the webb. These differences may almost be called culture differences.

Congratulations on your clever way to invite us to use the keyboard! One comment may become a habit!

By: Naomi

Naomi — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:11:48 +0000

I’m with thereisnosquare. I want to comment, but I don’t have my real blog up and running yet. In my type-A, you-never-get-a-second-chance-to-make-a-first-impression way, I don’t want to start commenting until I have a decent URL to link to. And I don’t have a decent URL to link to because the technical aspect of creating a decent looking blog scares the daylights out of me. And so I do nothing but read.

I know it’s completely self-sabotaging, but I read all the advice about making sure you have your own domain name, making sure your blog doesn’t look too bloggery, making sure your ads are in the right place and I become terrified of making mistakes. And since I respect the readers of this blog especially, I don’t want to ruin any future reputation by linking to a crappy blog.

I did, however, answer your poll. Perhaps I prefer the anonymous contribution option. :)

By: ming2.0

ming2.0 — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:53:35 +0000

on one of my blogs(http://30dayartist.com), tho i haven’t done the math, most of the comments are left by females, and the forms and e-mails i get are also largely female biased.

Perhaps its a social thing, word of mouth might spread faster in one gender, and take longer to get across to the other sex.

By: Shadows Edge

Shadows Edge — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:28:07 +0000

I know that the main reason I rarely comment on other blogs is because I’m pretty new to blogging in general. I’ve been lurking around the edges and only in the past couple of months decided to take the plunge. At this point, I’m more concerned with getting posts up and creating a stockpile of posts for those times when my inspiration is lagging or I find myself running out of time.

The latest Group Writing project is the first one I’ve participated in and finally prodded me to make a couple of comments here and there on the blogs I’ve been lurking around.

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:24:40 +0000

Yo! Ten percent, represent!

Performancing.com asked the same question a while back, and got pretty much the same answers– it would seem you have to call the women out for them to answer– either specifically, as this post does, or with some other form of irrisistible comment fodder.

Looks like that backs up the busy, less-likely-to-talk-to-strangers, and the hey-we’re-out-here comments.

By: Tillerman

Tillerman — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:19:52 +0000

Just did a count of the comments to the last 10 posts on my blog. 18 out of 51 comments were from females – or about 35%. The blog is about sailing so perhaps of more interest to both sexes than a techie blog. And of the recent posts quite a few have been about various relationship and parenting issues affecting the sport so perhaps that skewed it a bit also.

By: John

John — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:58:53 +0000

I did a simple query at MSN’s adcenter with the Demographics Prediction tool (http://adlab.msn.com/DPUI/DPUI.aspx) for the term “problogger” and found these numbers:

Male: 61%
Female: 39%

Then I did it for the URL http://www.problogger.net and found these numbers:

Male: 60%
Female: 40%

I have no idea how accurate these numbers are but I thought it was interesting that it somewhat corroborates your numbers.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:25:03 +0000

I’m actually with Cassie on this one, my child keeps me pretty busy, and while I read every day, actually commenting can be hard, especially when he’s fighting me for the keyboard ;). I’m not saying that men aren’t busy as well, but they may have more undivided time at the computer where they aren’t also doing ten other things and running back and forth.

By: Miriguy

Miriguy — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 07:34:37 +0000

I personally read this blog almost every weekday. But I rarely would comment, unless I feel like to :)
So, I think it’s a bit biased :)

By: Helen

Helen — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 06:30:07 +0000

As a female myself I have to agree with Renee’s theory. I always feel a little shy of joining into a discussion when I’m not familiar with the others.

And I did participate in the last group writing project. Usually I would have thought twice about that as well but since I already had a draft that happened to be about my blog goals, I thought why not.

From my personal perspective, your conclusion seems pretty accurate.

By: Cassie

Cassie — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 03:06:53 +0000

I completely agree with Renee, but as I was reading this post, I was thinking of my own theory as well.

I’m a busy mom who needs to take care of two kids, clean house, do laundry and plenty of other ‘motherly’ stuff as well as working online. I have very limited time when I’m working and it’s sporadic to say the least. So the time I do have is mainly spent focusing on my content and keeping my blogs fresh as best to my ability.

I would comment more if I had more time, but I feel that writing posts on my own blog is more important than networking through comments.

I may be completely out of the ball park on this one, but it’s the first thing that came to my mind when seeing the poll results.

By: thereisnosquare

thereisnosquare — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 02:55:42 +0000

It might just have to do with the fact that the IT industry in general is dominated by males. And sitting at an electronic gadget having fun is more of a male activity than a female one whether it’s a computer, PlayStation or blogging.

However, I’m in the process of redesigning my website which will include several blogs so when I relaunch later this year I will join the apparently small female blogger club!