WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook


Established 02004

Gosh, how many female bloggers are there, anyway…?

retro cavewoman asks where are all the men bloggers
Graphic from Tild~, of course

"Well, its actually time to put together the list for Top 50 Female Bloggers. I started with 50 and will expand to 100 if there are a lot more female bloggers than I expected."

…says ENKAY  [Warning: Ads Ads Ads]

I’m actually on this list.

How did I get there?

I posted a comment directing him to one of my posts on the weary issue of where are the women bloggers?

But, apparently instead of going there and seeing that we number in the hundreds, thousands, and tens-of-thousands, he just added me to the list.

Now, this is a young man — 19, he says — but he also claims to have been on the internet since 1999 . Shouldn’t he know?

He has, however, put a lot of energy into this effort, developing a complicated ranking formula:

"The female bloggers will be ranked based on their Google Page Rank,
their Alexa Rank and their Technorati ranking. The list will be updated
on a weekly basis as Alexa and Technorati will be updated but so will
the actual rankings themselves."

This puts me at #68 today, but I expect to keep falling as more of us are added to the list, and he discovers that there’s an ocean out there, in which I am a microscopic minnow.

A microscopic female minnow. (Do minnows have gender?)

Because this keeps coming up, I’ve made a page devoted to the issue:

female gender sign  HERE ARE (a few of) THE WOMEN BLOGGERS

From now on, I can just point to it.

Will I put ENKAY’s Female Bloggers List on that page?

Oh, what the hell. I probably will. I’m going to assume he means well. I’m sure he does mean well.

But I hope that he — and others — learn eventually: just because you don’t see us, don’t assume we’re not here.   We’re here, all of us: women, children, the disabled, the poor, the quiet, the invisible of all shapes, sizes, and colors — all the people who are not you.

We’re here.

UPDATE

ENKAY tells us in comments:

"Hey there! I definitely do mean well by having the list as I wish to
shed light onto some of the talented female bloggers out there … It’s basically "Readers Choice Award" so being on
the list is actually quite an honor because it means that someone
nominated you, and in your case, there was someone else other than
yourself who nominated you! …
"

I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me, but it didn’t — so thanks to whoever it was that nominated me. And — I happen to know — he is still accepting nominations.

5 responses to “Gosh, how many female bloggers are there, anyway…?”

  1. Actually, a good number of my favorite blogs are written by women. Lucia, Tinu and Meg are in everyday list. With the number of Women Bloggers that I am exposed to on a regular basis (and given the topics that they blog about) I would not have thought there was an issue with them not getting noticed. I see them everywhere.

  2. Hey there! I definitely do mean well by having the list as I wish to shed light onto some of the talented female bloggers out there. I have been directed to a lot of places that show hundreds and thousands of female bloggers but the idea of this particular list is to nominate a female blogger (or more than one), who you like to read and they will be added to the list. Its basically “Readers Choice Award” so being on the list is actually quite an honor because it means that someone nominated you, and in your case, there was someone else other than yourself who nominated you! I hope this clears matters up and I am sorry for the miscommunication, I hope you see my intention. Thanks

  3. I can’t believe we’re even still having this conversation.

  4. I don’t usually pay attention to the gender of bloggers, but this prompted me to count up the number of female bloggers in the “smorgasblog” folder of my feed reader, from which I cull my sideblog digest: 56 out of a total of 108, so just over half.

  5. I, too, find that female and male bloggers are divided fairly evenly. What i enjoy most, is any blogger with personality and pizazz. Which is why i drop by here so often.

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