Research on blogging and women bloggers

Still wandering all around the web looking for research on women bloggers, women bloggers who blog about education technology, leadership and higher education. I found a directory resource for women bloggers and an article (Taylor Eisenman) citing research on how infrequently popular male bloggers include female bloggers on their blogroll. This article was based on Clancy Ratcliff's dissertation research. Ratcliff's (2005) research focused on a "case study of gender differentials in discourse on weblogs (often called the “blogosphere”). To that end, I am analyzing the “Where are the women?” debates to ascertain the ways both men and women account for the gender gap in blogging"(Ratcliff, 2005).

Some of the reasons outlined for the gap in this study included:

women aren't self-promoters

women "can't handle agnostic nature of political discourse" of blogs

women use pseudonyms more than males

women don't blog about politics

While Clancy's(2005)dissertation research has a focus on rhetoric and politics it does ask the question, "Where are the women" and will provide me with more research based information to answer my questions about women blogging about this blog's areas of focus. I am looking forward to learning more about blogging and the discourse about women who blog over the course of this year and will link this site to Blogs by Women soon.

English posts that contain Women Bloggers per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Blogs, blog persona, and back to leadership issues

Went in to check my gmail account today and found an invitation to a EdTechTalk. It was past the date for the talk, but went there anyway to view past and upcoming calendar information on the talks with "educators dedicated to helping those involved in educational technology explore, discusss, and collaborate in its use". Started meandering around and found information about something called a Tumblelog.

You can create a blog with "less fuss" using a free tool called Tumblr. These blogs are highly visual and less text based than most blogs. The less fuss part is intriguing, but would probably prove to be more fuss for me as I would then need a digital camera (must be one of the few people in the world without one in my cell phone), and would spend a lot of time learning how use it and taking photos for the Tumblelog. To get an idea of what one of these might look like, visit Tumbleo.

Did some more meandering while thinking about blogs and how some portray the strong personas of their authors and others don't. Went searching for more information about persona and blogging and found another woman blogger, Dr. Helen, who blogged about this and women and leadership. The posting about women and leadership was connected to a MSN article titled, Men rule ---at least in workplace attitudes .

Food for thought from MSN , “To be a leader you have to be decisive and take charge. That fits fine for men, but when women do it they get labeled.” The jist of the article in a list:

men are still seen as more effective leaders than women, by both men and women

women don't want to be too confident or authoritative, lest they get called the "B" word

women worry about being called wishy-washy, indecisive, or emotional

most men would rather have a male supervisor and so would most women

in our society leadership is still a code word for masuline

Oh yeah, and Dr. Helen said, "If You Want to be a Leader--Quit talking about your Freaking Grandkids"!