As a woman blogger, who is also a full time business woman, I am less likely to want to spend time trying to figure out the technical aspects and wish that people could write them with a little more simplicity, or at least so that people can understand them rather that as if they are talking to geeks. And I have a technical background. It’s also true that women are often juggling many other things (in addition to working and raising families) and may well only be able to sit down in front of a computer after everything else has been done – it’s very easy for blogging to be relegated to a luxury. Time is a big factor – women seem to have less of it. I understand there is going to be a BlogHer conference coming up in California and one is planned for Toronto (BlogHer North) in the near future. So this is obviously a topic on the radar.

Another aspect of this whole thing is that blogs are media–and as the CCTimes points out, newspaper/magazine business (media) is *dominated* by men. I currently work in “new media” as the editor of the Corante Media Hub. I read men all day, see men comment on one another’s blogs like crazy, but see very few women commenting, and very few of the men commenting back on women’s blogs–or even engaging women in conversation when women leave comments on their blogs. It’s not that women aren’t as smart, but it is, in part, that we aren’t necessarily into the kinds of kvetching that men get into.

And it is *super hard* to break into that business network that Scoble talks about. It’s pretty insular, and a woman definitley has to speak geek to crack the ice–sometimes a feat not all that easy. I’ve often found myself at conferences, talking to geek-dudes, and finding that we use different words to describe the same things. Frustrating? Yes. They’re setting the standards and it often feels like, as a woman, I have to use a different language to speak with them.

But things may change–lots of women are better at conversation and, after all, blogging *is* social (conversational) media

Nancy Holder is an author with over 60 books published ( http://www.nancyholder.com ) who is relatively new to the www scene and a bit unnerved by the idea of a clean-sweep ‘total’ change of her site, but I am working on her to switch over to WordPress. I hate the markup currently (based on some cheap-a$$ template), and she has no ability to post/manipulate because she ‘wants to be an author, not a web-designer’. I think the WordPress learning curve (compared to Dremweaver?) is minimal enough to get her into the ‘fray’ of blogging with the least toe-stubbing.

River Huston, a circuit speaker and all-around hero of mine has a similar site currently ( http://www.riverhuston.com ) and asked for my help setting up a blog in addition to updating some of her current site. I ignorantly (would be better to start from scratch rather then add to old shaky code) threw up blosxom under a link and although it works, posting is a struggle for her. Not writing the post, mind you, just getting it into her blog. Once again, I am thinking WordPress, but wow does she have a lot of content (time-consuming?).

Anita Wagenvoord is an artist into murals and faux finshes ( http://www.anitawagenvoord.com ). She can make her way around her Mac ok (all these women are on Mac’s, btw) but HTML/HTTP/CSS makes her eyes glaze over. However, with a system like WordPress there’s a chance her site could become a lot more interesting… She tells wonderful stories about working outside on murals and the people that approach her and I would love it if she could share these on her site…

I think the gender ratio does have some connection to the accessibility factor. Especially with more mature women.

I like these bloggers and they all happen to be women.