Damn, you have too much spare time! ;o)

Really interesting stuff, Darren. Maybe men are just more geeky? My wife and many of my friend's wives just find the whole thing extremely boring.

I guess that in the god-blog thing, much of it will be related to the subordination of women in leadership?

Dunno. I don't have all the answers, but I'm not sure you expected me to.

Bless you

Do this statistic. What proportion of god-bloggers are ministers or in full time ministry? What proportion of ministers or those in full time paid ministry are male? In my experience there is a predominance of professional minister god bloggers, and that professional ministers are predominantly male.

Excellent research Darren....I got a head ache looking at initial statistics awhile ago too.

My hope is that this medium where ever the gender percentages go will remain a common ground, a meeting place, where we understand we belong in the agape kingdom first and foremost.
Rest up mate, and then blog on!

Darren:

I wonder if it has something to do with your "Testosteroneless church" thing. If men are somewhat isolated in "normal" church community (whatever that means) and still need connection somewhere, blogging seems to work.

If we can't find it locally, we go on the web...

Just a thought. And a small thought it is at this time of the morning.

Many bloggers have some form of tertiary education in some form of ministry or theology. Traditionally, these areas are more the province of males. Not totally, but certainly the majority are males. This is interesting to me because of the proportion of women in the church at large is the opposite.
As I said, just a thought. My views on leadership generally are different to commonly held views and I mean much more than just the usual "ordaining of women" debate.
And yes, I like the ongoing dialogue of comments.

I can understand the headache. What a job.
Shalom,
Jan

To some extent, there is an income split. People who blog tend to have their own computer, and computers are non-essential items in the budget. It takes a lot more effort to use a public, borrowed or shared machine. Computer knowledge is still a more male field, female geeks are less rare than five years ago, but still outnumbered. I've noticed women go on the net for conversation, men to find things out, for example, Hubby goes straight to the web, whereas I check my email and read blogs first.

Excellent post, thank you for the research. Now go play outside for a bit!

I have quite a few christian female bloggers I visit... they are out there.

I agree with Dan, most 'God bloggers' as you call them are male because most are ministers who are rightfully mainly male.

The best blogs are those that teach and explain Scripture and therefore should be male bloggers as this is their role in the body.

Female bloggers that I've seen tend to be more relational and personal. They don't talk so much about the deeper or theological issues but instead focus on relationships, social observations and debriefing on lifes challenges.

Males and females are wired differently so I think that this is ok - it reflects the way God intends things to be.

Great work Darren -- great post too!

Well, it doesn't hurt to list b4G !-)

Kidding aside, let me know if you want me to flag various blogs in the future to make such exhaustive searches in the future a bit easier.

I don't have a blog because I feel blogging is a bit of a male domain. I've tried to engage some male bloggers in conversation only to either be ignored or to be shouted down. I prefer to use chat (either msn or IRC) to engage people online, I find that on that medium there are alot more Christian females, although men can be pigs there too.

I also think its interesting that male bloggers don't comment in such an ongoing fashion. My theory is that they are more egotistical and would rather comment on their own turf and make others come there to converse - whereas females are more happy to have conversation whereever they are. I see a lot more bloggers leaving one off remarks on others blogs which I wonder about - often the comments are hardly related to the post at hand, they just seem to be trawling for hits back to their own site.

I suspect if we were to do a study that we'd find male bloggers check their counters more often than female bloggers for this reason, their identity is often so wrapped up in their success...maybe blogging is a way of gaining attention and therefore self worth!

I am a single woman who happens to share a home with a friend who is a mom and is raising 2 kids. My reasoning as to why males may dominate blogging is because many women, like my friend, are moms. I have learned that moms have little time for other things like blogging. (Just one theory because I know that many bloggers are college-aged and not married with children.)

I haven't noticed any particularly negativity or anything by male bloggers/commenters. It might be true to say that the people who get into comment fights on our site are mostly male, but then most of our comments are from males anyway (so far as this can be determined).

I had never even realised that the blogosphere was male dominated until someone pointed it out to me (goes to my own lack of perception about the issue, perhaps?). I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing, just interesting.

My collection of favourite blogs - mostly non-Christian, left-wing and pop culture focused - features more women than men. Mostly young, single, tertiary-educated women.

I reckon computers are a natural home for geeky guys, and there are a few cultural barriers for girls getting into blogging. Once they're in, though, the blogs seem very similar acorss gender divides. The A-List glass ceiling is pretty interesting, though.

Glad you're doing the research, Darren.

I think a lot of the discrepancies may be in the different purposes for blogs, or types of blogs. When I started blogging, it was as a contributor to our "community" blog. I soon found that I also wanted a different type of blog of my own, one that I would use as a sort of "computer diary". I had tried journaling by hand before and knew that I would write more if I didn't have to do it in longhand. Typing keeps up better with the pace of my thoughts (most of the time :^P). Maybe the predominance of men in the "A-list" blogs can be explained by the fact that most of the male blogs I read seem to be more about sharing information or links (and therefore more dependent on other people reading them), whereas most of the female blogs I read seem to be more about working through issues of life by writing about them. This makes it less "necessary" for other people to read them in order to fulfill the writer. It's indicative of the differences in why men and women communicate in general. Just a thought.

"My Blog - Links I started by examining the make up of my links page. On my own page I have 120 or so blogs listed."

And, um, one of them isn't gooddogbaddog.ca - for shame, Darren, for shame.

thrive
O

;-)

I read quite a few female-run blogs, but mostly in the "secular" side of the blog world. I haven't noticed so much difference between the male and female blogs - but then, I'm probably naive on that point.