Blogs are my business, which means I not only write them, I read a disproportional number of them as well. This is why I wasn't too surprised when I saw this article in Law.com, wondering why there seem to be so many more male bloggers than women in the legal blogosphere.
I wasn't surprised because in all of my blog reading, most of the authors I find are indeed men. Only about 35% of the general interest blogs I read (blogs about business, writing, books, and hobbies) are written by women, and that percentage gets even smaller when I look only at law blogs. Of all the law blogs I read on a regular basis, only about 20% are written by women. That number is only slightly higher for my clients, 25% of whom are women.
C.C. Holland, author of the article mentioned above, has three theories about why male bloggers are so much more prevalent than female blogger. They're all good educated guesses, but personally I'm inclined to agree with #2, especially with the quote from Kathleen Bergin who says that "it can be discouraging for women to try to make time for blogging because the rewards aren't immediate; it can feel like an additional obligation without a benefit."
Well, I highly encourage all those female lawyers to get blogging. In fact, I more than highly encourage it; I say that it is essential. Because what Kathleen Bergin says may be true in the short term--blogging is a lot of effort with little immediate return--but in the long term, blogging accomplishes exactly what women attorneys do best; it builds relationships and creates community. Not only that, blogging helps establish legitimacy and expertise, something that tends to be easier for men to achieve by default.
Women, if you don't feel you have time, make time. If you're afraid of mean or aggressive comments on your blog, use a top notch spam filter, or disable comments altogether for the first few months. But whatever it is that's keeping you from blogging--get over it. Blogs are easy and interesting, they're dynamic and controversial, and they're here to stay. In fact, they are even beginning to replace static websites for some businesses. And they're fairly new, which means we still have time to get in on the ground floor and be on equal footing with the men.
You can set up your blog right now on TypePad, WordPress, or Blogger, and it only takes about 15 minutes. Go for it. Then send me your URL so I can watch as your blogs (and those percentages) grow.
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