Women in the Science Blogosphere

Robin Lloyd at Scientific American has a great post up about one of my sessions at ScienceOnline2011 which was entitled "Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name." I plan to write more about the panel and encourage you to go read her terrific coverage of our discussion:

Blogging and other Web activities have allowed members of many marginalized communities to open previously locked media doors. But women still rely more on back channels and ask for less help than men do in the digital realm..For instance, comments posted to The Intersection blog, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum (@Sheril_) and Chris Mooney (@ChrisMooney_), tend to come from men, Kirshenbaum said, but emails to the blog authors typically come from women or children.

"Culturally, as women, we are less likely to speak out or argue," Kirshenbaum said, adding that women tend to create communities, and mentor and co-market one another behind the scenes, rather than in more public or traditional forums.

- And one of the most interesting moments -

A face-palm reaction rippled among the 20 or so mostly female attendees of the session when "Not exactly rocket science" blogger Ed Yong (@edyong209) said, "I suspect there is a bias in terms of what is pushed to me through Twitter." He explained that, although other male writers often ask him to retweet links to their latest blog posts, not a single such request has ever come from a woman writer. Women in the room immediately broke into laughter, and commented about the novelty and presumptuousness to them of such a practice. Said Yong, "The fact that people haven't done this speaks volumes."

Her full post here.