A few days ago, Dan Markel brought up (again) the fact that most blogs have a high male-to-female ratio. One of the comments left me reeling (and thinking). The female commenter used a term that I had previously only associated with litigators and bond traders (via Liar's Poker) to describe male bloggers and suggested that female law professors do not feel the need to become part of a medium that is 90% swaggering B.S. and 10% valuable analysis. That's harsh. We try to keep the B.S./analysis ratio here about even, but who knows? (Note: the comment has been deleted, but other commenters have tried to paraphrase what was a valuable, although PG-13, comment)
Given the talk in the blogosphere this week about tenure and blogging, my working hypothesis is that female law professors are more risk-averse than male law professors and that blogging while untenured is a high-risk activity. Whether female law professors are empricially tenured at a different rate than men, there may be a perception among women that obtaining tenure is trickier and requires a more conservative path. Like I said, a working hypothesis.
Today, guest blogger Marcy Peek has taken up the quest for answers at Prawfs.
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1. Posted by Eh Nonymous on October 12, 2005 @ 12:22 | Permalink
Christine: interesting hypothesis, but I'd reframe it entirely.
I think that professional women are not "risk-averse," they are simply less "stupid" than their peer men - and that this isn't a symptom of being a professional, or an academic, but simply an aspect of gender in our culture at present. Did someone light themselves on fire while trying to jump a bike across a canyon? Probably a dude.
Did someone walk into a liquor store - make that a _gun_ store - while flying on drugs and try to rob the cashier - while a cop car was parked outside? Probably someone with a Y chromosome in there.
Drunk driving, or things constituting reckless endangerment of the self, or such things aren't so much about taking a risk, as being too stupid or unreflective or unwise to avoid what would normally be recognized as risky.
Did a blogger post an extremely damaging admission about how attractive that one student in the class is? Most likely not a woman who made that particular mistake.
Women take risks. But I less frequently see them taking really, really, astoundingly stupid ones.
Also, I hypothesize that women are often content to make stupid mistakes where people won't witness them; maybe it takes a guy to want to fail so spectacularly that people will be talking about it for years. "He almost cleared the canyon, too...."
2. Posted by tioedong on October 12, 2005 @ 17:08 | Permalink
Few Female bloggers?
Probably because women see anything to do with a computer as "work", and between a job, housework, changing diapers, etc. who has time for another job?
Now, I don't use a computer at work, and my family are computer freeks, so I see blogging as fun...and have three blogs.
3. Posted by Priya on October 17, 2005 @ 15:30 | Permalink
I work on gender issues & this is currently a topic for discussion for us. The dichotomy between women being more intelligent than men o just risk averse. In my opinion, women are more prudent, which is actually a sign of their current plight. I mean, men dont need to be as prudent, as sensible... they can afford being risky, risking their jobs or their families. Women tend to be more fearful, more guilt loaded, more scared in front of life. Even if, in the end, in due circumstances, they might check that all that thoughtfulness is not needed.
4. Posted by Joan Heminway on October 19, 2005 @ 18:19 | Permalink
A new female/feminist entry in the blog race:
http://philobiblion.blogspot.com/2005/10/carnival-of-feminists-no-1.html.
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