We are small but mighty.
There are many fantastic women bloggers (I will get to that in a moment); however, at the highest levels of blogging they are statistically miniscule.
Of the top 50 bloggers listed on Technorati today, only five, or 12 percent are women.
Note: Although Wonkette, #32, was built by a woman it is now run by a man, so I didn’t count it.
I wondered how this result would scale to the PR Blogging community, so I conducted a very unscientific survey of the top 50 PR bloggers at the PubSub PR list to see how many women fell into that range.
Using the 30-day tab, I found only five blogs authored by women in the top 50 PR blogs (two of which are authored by the same person).
That is 10 percent of the top 50 blogs, an identical result to the Technorati list.
(20) Communications Overtones, Kami Huyse |
(22) KD Paine’s Measurement Blog, Katie Paine |
(33) The Right Conversation, Amy Gahran |
(43) Contentious, Amy Gahran
I was floored. In an industry where women make up the bulk of the workforce, we were woefully under-represented in the top ranks of the PR Blogs.
A caveat with this, I am well aware that PubSub can be a pretty unreliable source, with highly linked and rated bloggers often taking unexpected plunges in the ratings. There are at least three other well-known and highly ranked female PR bloggers that didn’t appear in the top 50 and probably should.
Even with these three added, only 16 percent of the top 50 PR blogs are authored by women.
I suspect this will change. In an interesting survey (PDF) last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the percentage of women online is slightly less than men, although it works out that there are slightly more online due to the larger female U.S. population. And under 30, women are outpacing men online.
I have no idea how this holds up worldwide, but I imagine that you will find more and more women’s voices rise to the top over time.
Here is a list of a few more women bloggers in the in the PR world, courtesy of Sun Ho Shim, thanks to Alice Marshall for the reminder.
(Update: This just in, Bloggers Blog just reported that I missed one of the Top 50 bloggers overall, and that is Cute Overload, by Megan Frost (#38). I actually saw this blog, but had no way of knowing it was authored by a women, though I admit it looked like it. So, I must officially change my title to 12 percent of bloggers, also PubSub got its act together and the PR Women Bloggers now stand at 14 percent.)
