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Women and Blogging: what you can do right now

jackbalkin@yahoo.com (Jack M. Balkin ) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:35:42 GMT

It was hard to know what to say when a law blogger asked "Do Women Blog?" a week before the women bloggers convention. I just kept blogging.

C.C. Holland now has an article on Law.com, Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers? Thankfully, she quotes Christine Hurt of Conglomerate who has been insisting for some time that it is hard to say anything meaningful about gender and the blogosphere without data. And basic data would not be hard to find.

The point I stressed to Holland, as she reports in the article, is: "Someone asking, in some ways hyperbolically, 'Do women blog?' is not reading the blogging that women are doing."

The difficulty of establishing a readership is exacerbated when bloggers don’t read and link to women bloggers.

This is not unlike a problem in legal scholarship that Mari Matsuda wrote about some time ago. In a critique of the Critical Legal Studies movement, she argued in 1987 that "there is a sense that critical scholars intend only to talk to each other....The articles cite and build upon each other." She encouraged CLS scholars to "establish dialogue with people of color and to add their voices to those that currently dominate the discourse." There was (and still is) a very practical way to do that: cite to their work.

Just as legal scholarship can sometimes be a closed circle, the law blogosphere functions that way when established bloggers read and link to each other, ignoring newer voices.

Rather than speculating about women and blogging, below the fold are some very practical and easy things to do that can highlight the role of women bloggers, and make it easier for newer voices to be heard.

For bloggers:

1. Take a look at your blog list. If you don’t have women bloggers on your bloglist, how about adding some today? For starters, some blogs by women are listed on the essential Feminist Law Professors Blog. (And in light of the advice below to women bloggers, here's a link to my Legal History Blog!)
2. Link to women. Moving up in rankings like Technorati depends on how many blogs link to you. Sometimes another blogger will pick up on a point I’ve made, but doesn’t add a link to my post. This seems to be part of the ABC’s of blog etiquette, but why not go beyond this and look for posts by women you can link to.
3. Help spread the word. When you hear about a new blogger, give them a shout-out. And feature established blogs that might be of interest to your readers.
4. Why not add the feed from another blog to your blog? I do this with the fabulous international law blog IntLawGrrls. I added their feedburner feed to the side of my blog for two reasons: there are often posts that are historically oriented that my legal history readers will be interested in, and I think it’s a great blog and I want to support it.

For readers:

You have a part in this, since the blogosphere consists of the relationship between bloggers and readers. When you find a post by women, or any blogger who can use more exposure, why not e-mail it to others? Blog readership is often built up by word-of-mouth (or word-of-keyboard).

For women bloggers and new bloggers:

A little shameless self-promotion is in order. Certainly send an e-mail about your blog launch to everyone you can think of. Then send an occasional post, with a link, to folks who might have an interest, and especially to relevant listservs that you are a member of. Everyone who has gone before you has built a readership by doing just that.

Ann Althouse offers her thoughts on the topic here. Ann Bartow weighed in on this topic earlier here.

(Cross-posted from the Legal History Blog.)

One more round of the old question: Why aren't there more female lawprof bloggers?

annalthouse@mac.com (Ann Althouse) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:10:22 GMT

Law.com has a big piece -- written by C.C. Holland -- on the old topic of the lack of women bloggers, specifically law bloggers. She -- I had to use Google to figure out C.C.'s a she -- details 3 theories:

Theory #1: Women law bloggers are out there, you just don't see them....

One explanation for the apparent lack of female voices is that while they're out there, they're not as well-promoted as the male bloggers. "Folks tend to link to their friends, and it's especially hard for a newer blogger to break into that closed circle," says [Mary Dudziak, a professor of law, history and political science at the University of Southern California and founder/editor of the Legal History Blog.]

I think any law professor starting a blog can email other lawprof bloggers and get an early boost. It's much harder for someone who is a lawyer to say look at my blog, but lawprofs have a huge advantage over other bloggers that should irritate nonlawprof bloggers.

It's unlikely that female lawprofs have a special disadvantage. Everyone knows that women lawprofs aren't equally prominent in the law blogosphere, and the tendency among lawprofs is to want to remedy gender inequality, and so women lawprof bloggers have a second advantage.

I remember the first time I emailed Glenn Reynolds in the hope of getting a link. It was back in 2004, after I wrote a post identifying a serious law-related error that a presidential candidate had made in a debate and that no one else had pointed out. I'd been blogging for 6 weeks, putting up posts every day that I was proud of and that I thought showed a distinctive writing style and point of view, but I hadn't thought it was appropriate to ask Glenn, whom I'd never met, to pay any attention to me before that. Glenn linked, and he also emailed something like I didn't know you had a blog, which surprised me, as the mere existence of my blog didn't seem like anything notable. But I got the impression that there was an eagerness to pay attention to women lawprof bloggers.

Theory #2: Women don't have the same time to blog as men. "Regardless of what we say about women's equality, women with families have disproportionate child care responsibilities which leaves them less time to pursue things like blogging," notes Kathleen Bergin, co-author of the First Amendment Law Prof Blog and associate professor of First Amendment and constitutional law at South Texas College of Law....

You know, blogging takes time. It takes attention and concentration, and if you are living with people who want attention, it's going to be hard. If you need or love to devote time to your family, you can set aside time to write if you care enough to do it -- a couple hours late at night or early in the morning -- but the question is whether you will want to do that. And you will need to do that every day if you want to become a prominent blogger.

I think it is much harder for women to say to the men and children in their house that this is time I demand for myself and then to sit there stare at a screen and clicking on a keyboard. It looks so cold, this melding of human being and machine.

I think wives get annoyed at husbands who spend too much time staring at the computer. But men who want to do it claim that time for themselves. Women, I think, worry more about looking so self-involved and unconnected to the real, fleshly human beings in the house. They are more vulnerable to guilt and guilt-tripping that they are not loving enough.

I'm no expert on marriage, though I was married long ago, but I can imagine what a husband would say if he was witnessing my writing habits. I picture him telling me it's absurd to live like this. It's unhealthy. It's insane.

Wait. That's why I'm not married. Let me try again.

I picture a wonderfully delightful man who is always luring me away from the keyboard with sex, food, tickets to movies and music shows, travel plans, and ... whatever... long walks in the damned rain. Without Bad Husband or Good Husband in the house telling me/showing me what I should be doing with my time, it's easier for me to choose to do something I want and love to do.

Anyway, Theory #2 has some weight, but I would like to see women take responsibility for what they do with their time. If you care about doing something that you are not now doing, change something.

You have "disproportionate child care responsibilities" and you're a law professor and that's not your choice? Do something about it! Don't use it as an excuse and complain that the whole structure of society needs to change first.

Theory #3: Women are more prone to professional or personal attack, so they avoid blogging....

There's some truth to this, but again, I'd like to see some personal responsibility.

The internet is not going to coddle and comfort you. In fact, the internet wants you out of here. If you're going to be the sort of person who doesn't want to insist on her place when she can see that other people want her out of here, you're not going to get very far blogging.

Some blogosphere folk may want to make this a nice, inviting place for you, but they don't control the environment. It's a big, crazy world in here, and you have to stake out your place in it. There are plenty of people who are only too willing to use the techniques that work to exclude women, and you have to decide that you intend to stay. It takes some nerve, and there's a price to pay. It is harder for women. Do it anyway.

Stop whining, blaming others, looking for protectors, and blog... if you want to. If you don't, be honest. Admit it. Play with your kids, watch TV with your husband, read a novel, write a novel... Do what you want, but for God's sake, know what you want and admit it.

ADDED: Mary Dudziak responds to the article:

There are lots of women bloggers, including law bloggers. But it can be hard to break out of a particular niche and into the broader blogosphere. For good bloggers without a natural audience, it can be very hard to establish a readership.

The difficulty of establishing a readership is exacerbated when bloggers don’t read and link to women bloggers....

Dudziak tells bloggers that they ought to read, blogroll, and link to women bloggers more. You know, it's not that easy to link to blogs. Links need to be worth following, and you won't be a successful linker if you disappoint your readers by sending them to posts that aren't interesting enough. I don't want to link to something that is going to make readers think I'm trying to help women (especially if it looks like I'm trying to help those most privileged of women, women law professors). I'm not blogging to benefit other bloggers. I'm blogging to benefit readers.

AND: Glenn Reynolds links to this post and seems to disagree with my line "I'm not blogging to benefit other bloggers. I'm blogging to benefit readers."

Hmm. I'm more with SayUncle: "I do this to amuse me, not you."

Well, I agree with that too. I'm definitely in it for the personal satisfaction, and perhaps I flatter myself to think that by doing what pleases me, I will benefit you. But I do think that. I do think that blogging is about living freely in writing, in real time, in front of the world.

Glenn has a theory:

In that spirit, here's my own hypothesis: Men are genetically programmed to try to stand out through action, in the hopes of attracting women. It's true, of course that blogging is a relatively ineffective way of doing that -- but so are many other ways this urge manifests itself, like extreme Star Trek fandom. The point is the genetically programmed urge, which isn't programmed into women in the same manner. Is this true? Beats me, but it's amusing.

This theory suggests that it's much harder for women to achieve great things. We don't have the ulterior motive. We're only doing something because we think it's worth doing for its own sake. But, then again, it may be a different kind of advantage, to have no ulterior motives.

Available online from law.com

appellateblog@hotmail.com (Howard J. Bashman) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:23:08 GMT

Available online from law.com: Tony Mauro has an article headlined "For the Supreme Court, a Term of Change Ahead."

Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal reports that "High Court's Busy New Term Just Got Busier; Justices add key criminal cases and critical Superfund case."

And Mary Alice Robbins of Texas Lawyer reports that "High Court to Hear Arguments on ERISA Beneficiary Designation; Thompson & Knight partner, making his first appearance before the Supreme Court, calls 'Kennedy' a test case."

Meanwhile, in commentary, C.C. Holland has an essay entitled "Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?"

Women & blogging: What you can do right now

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:13:07 GMT

(A guest post from Mary L. Dudziak)

It was hard to know what to say a while back when a law blogger asked "Do Women Blog?" a week before the women bloggers convention. I just kept blogging.

Northern California-based author C.C. Holland now has an article on Law. Com, "Where Are All the Female Bloggers?"

Thankfully, she quotes University of Illinois Law Professor Christine Hurt (left) of Conglomerate, a business/law/economics/society blog, who has been insisting for some time that it is hard to say anything meaningful about gender and the blogosphere without data. And basic data would not be hard to find.
The point I stressed to Holland, as she reports in the article, is:

Someone asking, in some ways hyperbolically, 'Do women blog?' is not reading the blogging that women are doing.

There are lots of women bloggers, including law bloggers. But it can be hard to break out of a particular niche and into the broader blogosphere. For good bloggers without a natural audience, it can be very hard to establish a readership.
The difficulty of establishing a readership is exacerbated when bloggers don’t read and link to women bloggers.
This is not unlike a problem in legal scholarship that Georgetown Law Professor Mari Matsuda (right) wrote about some time ago. In a critique of the Critical Legal Studies movement, she argued in 1987 that

there is a sense that critical scholars intend only to talk to each other. ... The articles cite and build upon each other.

She encouraged CLS scholars to

establish dialogue with people of color and to add their voices to those that currently dominate the discourse.

There was (and still is) a very practical way to do that: cite to their work.
Just as legal scholarship can sometimes be a closed circle, the law blogosphere functions that way when established bloggers read and link to each other, ignoring newer voices.
Rather than speculating about women and blogging, here are some very practical and easy things to do that can highlight the role of women bloggers, and make it easier for newer voices to be heard:
For bloggers
? 1. Take a look at your blog list. If you don’t have women bloggers on your bloglist, how about adding some today? For starters, some blogs by women are listed on the essential Feminist Law Professors Blog.
? 2. Link to women. Moving up in rankings like Technorati depends on how many blogs link to you. Sometimes another blogger will pick up on a point I’ve made, but doesn’t add a link to my post. This seems to be part of the ABCs of blog etiquette. But why not go beyond this and look for posts by women you can link to?
? 3. Help spread the word. When you hear about new bloggers, give them a shout-out. And feature established blogs that might be of interest to your readers.
? 4. Why not add the feed from another blog to your blog? I do this with the fabulous international law blog IntLawGrrls. I added their feedburner feed to the side of my blog for two reasons: there are often posts that are historically oriented that my legal history readers will be interested in, and I think it’s a great blog and I want to support it.
For readers
You have a part in this, since the blogosphere consists of the relationship between bloggers and readers. When you find a post by women, or any blogger who can use more exposure, why not e-mail it to others? Blog readership is often built up by word-of-mouth (or word-of-keyboard).
For women bloggers and new bloggers
A little shameless self-promotion is in order. Certainly send an e-mail about your blog launch to everyone you can think of. Then send an occasional post, with a link, to folks who might have an interest, and especially to relevant listservs that you are a member of. Everyone who has gone before you has built a readership by doing just that.
University of Wisconsin Law Professor Ann Althouse (above right), author of Althouse blog, offers her thoughts on the topic here. And at Feminist Law Professors Blog, University of Southern California Law Professor Ann Bartow (left) weighed in on this topic earlier here.

(Original appeared at Legal History Blog, cross-posted at Balkinization blog. More thoughts on this subject below.)

Women Blawg Just Fine

SHG@simplejustice.us (Scott Greenfield) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:53:10 GMT

Since I don't think in terms of who blawgers are as much as what they have to say, the thought hadn't occurred to me. But C.C. Holland at Law.com asks, "Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?" The question, obviously, suggests that they are missing. Anne Reed, Niki Black, Anne Skove, Carolyn Elefant, Susan Cartier Liebel, Blonde Justice and many others. They are all women, as far as I can tell, and I read everything they post.

Granted, Ruthie fell off the face of the earth, but that was only after her spurned love for Charon QC, and the vicious advances of Geeklawyer, all deeply personal and hardly reflective of a trend. But it doesn't matter, since Holland is unaware that the blawgosphere crosses borders and oceans, so drama amongst female British blawgers plays no role in her analysis.

But as Holland points out, in the broader blawgosphere, there appear to be more men than woman blawging.

Sites such as Above the Law (David Lat), How Appealing (Howard J. Bashman) and Balkinization (Jack M. Balkin) are each authored or edited by one man. The China Law Blog is written by Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson of Harris & Moure. The Volokh Conspiracy, another popular law blog, list 18 contributors, none of whom are female. The woman blogger whose name comes up most frequently in the legal space is law professor Ann Althouse, but her blog isn't primarily about legal issues.

So what's behind this seeming disparity?

This universe of six blogs falls a bit short of proof. But Holland notes some statistics:

Joe Hodnicki, co-founder of the Law Professor Blogs Network and co-editor of the Law Librarian Blog, says about 30 percent of his network's 100 or so bloggers are female law professors.

BlawgWorld 07's list of the 77 most influential "blawgs" (legal blogs) includes just 13 (16.8 percent) authored by women.

LexMonitor's directory of AmLaw 200 blogs, approximately 157 of the blogs' individually named contributors are male, but only 48 -- or 23 percent -- are female.

I'm beginning to see part of Holland's problem. She is stuck in the BigBlawg frame of reference, meaning those handful of blawgs that make it onto the radar of clueless people who know squat about blawging. Yet, that doesn't mean she isn't right, even if she hasn't proven it.

Despite her lack of basis, Holland pursues three theories to explain the "no women 'round here" phenomenon. One explanation is that proffered by Holland is that women don't have time to blawg, because they are too busy with family responsibilities.

Another explanation is that it's more dangerous for women to blawg, as they are more likely to be subject to personal attacks than men. The corollary to this is that women can't handle the negative reactions, ranging from "I disagree" to "you're an idiot" to threats of violence.

But the explanation I find far more reasonable is that:

Women law bloggers are out there, you just don't see them. "There are more women (law) bloggers than you think," says Carolyn Elefant, an attorney in private practice who writes the MyShingle blog (and is a Law.com blogger as well). "I think they predominate in the practical blogosphere. I think this myth of there being fewer female bloggers got started because the focus was more on the big-name sites, which tended to be (run by) men."

Carolyn understands something that Holland appears not to get at all. You don't just "open a blawg" and go on the Johnny Carson show the next night as the toast of the blawgosphere. It doesn't work that way for anyone, male or female. Note that Carolyn refers to the "practical blogosphere," a phrase coined by the Texas Tornado, Mark Bennett, distinguishing us second-wave blawgers, practicing lawyers who post about real life experiences and issues as opposed to the academic blawgers who monopolized the first wave of blawging.

Holland misconstrues the issue by considering it as a problem:

One explanation for the apparent lack of female voices is that while they're out there, they're not as well-promoted as the male bloggers. "Folks tend to link to their friends, and it's especially hard for a newer blogger to break into that closed circle," says Dudziak.

"Trying to get links requires being a little extroverted," says Kimberly Amick, co-author of the California Appellate Law Blog and a senior associate at Archer Norris. "It can be a little intimidating, but it's really no different than walking up to someone and shaking their hand."

And, says Hodnicki, "It's a crowded blogosphere now, so it's harder to acquire an audience."

So who exactly is "well-promoting" male blawgers but leaving the females in the dust? And does Amick really think that you get links by asking for them? I don't think this is what either meant, but it's how Holland misinterpreted their words.

Hodnicki is right, the blawgosphere is getting crowded, which means that weak blawgs will not get readers and will not survive. This is how it should be. This is pure meritocracy. No one can make someone go to a blawg and read. They do it only if they want to. And it doesn't matter how many links you have from friends, if the content sucks, no one will come back. Anyone can blawg, but not everyone will survive.

As for blawging "friends", we make them all the time, not because we physically hang out and have a beer with them, but because we read their stuff and appreciate it. That's how friendships happen, and I have NEVER seen anyone care if the blawger is male or female, white or black, tall or short. That's because it's all about the posts, and we never actually see or touch anyone. I can't tell if another blawger is tall or short, gay or straight, so there is no inherent bias at all. I can ignore someone just like me as well as someone completely different, if they don't have the goods.

There is no barrier to entry to the blawgosphere. All it takes is a dollar and a dream (literally) to become a blawger. But after that, it's purely a matter of creating content that someone wants to read. All the friends in the world won't overcome lack of content or bad content. No one opens a blawg and proclaims, "I'm male, read me."

I offer no explanation for the phenomenon of there being fewer women blawgers, if that is in fact the case. It can be a tough gig, but if women want to blawg, I say blawg. Many, perhaps most, of the new blawgs that will appear in the next year will not attract a following. They didn't last year either.

But as far as I can see, there are some darn good female blawgers who can hold their own with any male in the blawgosphere, if not beat most of them to a pulp. Too bad Holland doesn't know they exist. I do.

Where are all the female law bloggers? Hanging out in the ADR blogosphere of course.

mail@mediationchannel.com (Diane Levin) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:11:09 GMT

C.C. Holland, writing for Legal Technology laments the lack of strong female voices among legal bloggers and asks, “Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?” Holland may not have looked very hard. There’s a bunch of us — loud, proud, and outspoken — right here in the ADR blogosphere. We include: Me, Diane Levin, here at Mediation [...]

C.C. Holland, writing for Legal Technology laments the lack of strong female voices among legal bloggers and asks, “Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?”

Holland may not have looked very hard.

There’s a bunch of us — loud, proud, and outspoken — right here in the ADR blogosphere. We include:

Me, Diane Levin, here at Mediation Channel

Vickie Pynchon, Settle It Now Negotiation Law Blog

Stephanie West Allen, Idealawg and Brains on Purpose

Gini Nelson, Engaging Conflicts

Nancy Hudgins, Civil Negotiation and Mediation

Dominique Lopez-Eychenie, her eponymous French language blog

Jan Frankel Schau’s Mediation Insights

Phyllis G. Pollack, PGP Mediation Blog

Paula M. Lawhon, San Francisco Mediation: A Better Solution

Dina Lynch Eisenberg, Mediation Mensch

Andrea Schneider, Nancy Welsh, and Sarah Rudolph Cole, ADR Prof Blog

(I’m also going to make dispute resolution professional and blogging role model Tammy Lenski an honorary lawyer since no list of women who blog about mediation would be complete without including her and her two blogs, Conflict Zen and Mediator Tech.)

Very Special Events Calendar

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

With just one leeetle item: court-o-rama will be in NYC for the ABA's DR Section Spring Conference!!!

Really there is so little information that we should have waited, but we are psyched! Everything you wanted to know about probate mediation but didn't, that's our theme. The official title is: "Dead Decedents and Splitting Heirs: How Do We Get Disputants out of Court and around the Table?"

Cohorts include Professor Lela Love of Cardozo and Karen Borgstrom of the New Hampshire Judicial Branch.

No time, no hotel, stay tuned for more info as we hear it!!!

Where are all the women in the Legal Blogosphere?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:33:08 GMT

Hat tip to Joe Hodnicki for the link to this interesting article. As October 18 approaches, I challenge you to write or post or blog (used as a verb like that annoying guy on TV).

Cheers, Shaunna

Hey! ATL has female bloggers and an EIC with a gender-neutral name

tips@abovethelaw.com (David Lat) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:06:51 GMT

Law.com has an article this week lamenting the absence of females in the legal blogosphere. C.C. Holland writes:

The question is not a new one, but it's gaining traction in the blogosphere lately as the old concern spawns new debate. And it seems to be true that the majority of high-profile legal blogs, whether in academia or the practice of law, are helmed by men.
Sites such as Above the Law (David Lat), How Appealing (Howard J. Bashman) and Balkinization (Jack M. Balkin) are each authored or edited by one man. The China Law Blog is written by Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson of Harris & Moure. The Volokh Conspiracy, another popular law blog, list 18 contributors, none of whom are female. The woman blogger whose name comes up most frequently in the legal space is law professor Ann Althouse, but her blog isn't primarily about legal issues.

We object! For one thing, Above The Law is "authored or edited" by a new man, editor in chief since August Elie Mystal. (David Lat is ATL's founder and still near and dear to our hearts, as a regular contributor and managing editor of our parent company Breaking Media.)

Additionally, the gender-ambiguous C.C. neglects to note that the ATL ladies outnumber the men these days, as some may have noted last week in our self-congratulatory post. ATL's XX team consists of Laurie Lin, Hope Winters, Marin and yours truly.

More on the female law blogger question, and bikini photos, after the jump.

Blogging for Boys

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:17:38 GMT

Just a short post1 to raise a question that’s discussed on Law.com today, which is why American legal blogs seem to be populated by boys and abandoned by women. That doesn’t seem to be the case here at Slaw. Is that something about Slaw? Or Canadian law? Or simply that our focus on [...]

Just a short post¹ to raise a question that’s discussed on Law.com today, which is why American legal blogs seem to be populated by boys and abandoned by women.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here at Slaw. Is that something about Slaw? Or Canadian law? Or simply that our focus on legal information, technology and research isn’t the same as those blogs that Law.com was looking at?

It offers three theories (none of which is particularly compelling:

Theory #1: Women law bloggers are out there, you just don’t see them. ²

Theory #2: Women don’t have the same time to blog as men.

Theory #3: Women are more prone to professional or personal attack, so they avoid blogging.

Any reactions to the article anyone?

Since I’m in the Dolomites and we’re off to a concert tonight
Women bloggers aren’t as relentlessly self-promoting

Interesting Law.com Article Regarding Blogging

kamick@archernorris.com (Kimberly Amick) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:40:17 GMT

CC Holland, special to Law.com, wrote an interesting feature today entitled, "Where Are All the Female Bloggers." I was interviewed for the article, and have to admit, I hadn't recognized that there was an apparent lack of female bloggers until Ms. Holland asked me about it. Nonetheless, the article contains interesting, if not alarming observations. Personally, I've had a blast participating in the "blogosphere" and have been lucky enough to avoid some of the downsides discussed in the article. Food for thought.

"Women good, men bad."

jdhull@hullmcguire.com (JD Hull) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:14:16 GMT

Ah, the utter tragedy, and injustice, of Nature, of biology--and of the girl and boy thing. Where will it all end? "Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?" has been getting lots of press--but we can't figure out why. The best, brightest and strongest bloggers--and writers, speakers, corporate lawyers, business owners, actors, humans, etc.--we know are "females" and regularly trounce us "dudes" in most endeavors in work and life. And there's a lot of these creatures. The author of the piece, obviously talented and well-meaning but trying to set the women's movement back about 40 years, is invited to impress us all in the future with a better choice of topics.

UPDATE: Some serious and comprehensive coverage by our betters and friends: Simple Justice, Legal Blog Watch, Diane Levin (all with links to dames who blog).

Ms. Gish is one of many "females" in the WAC? Pantheon. Gish is said to avoid whiners and weenies.

"Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?"

uclpractitioner@gmail.com (Kimberly A. Kralowec) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:17:05 GMT

A Law.com article today asks, "Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?" Hello, here's one right here! I don't know about other women bloggers, but I have had no problems promoting my blog, finding time to write it, or dealing...

A Law.com article today asks, "Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?" Hello, here's one right here! I don't know about other women bloggers, but I have had no problems promoting my blog, finding time to write it, or dealing with personal attacks -- the three reasons given for why fewer women lawyers supposedly write law blogs.

UPDATE: Thanks to author C.C. Holland for including my blog in this list: "Strong Female Voices in the Legal Blogosphere." See also this post at Legal Blog Watch for more links to prominent women law bloggers.

Jordan Furlong

jordan.furlong@gmail.com (Jordan Furlong) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Every online community loves a meta-conversation, a discussion about the community itself, and the blawgosphere is no exception. But even by those standards, the explosion of posts ignited by a law.com article on women law bloggers was remarkable for its strength and immediacy. Published yesterday, the article posited a relative absence of women blawggers (rather ironically, [...]

Published yesterday, the article posited a relative absence of women blawggers (rather ironically, considering the term “blawg” was coined by Denise Howell) and suggested various hypotheses to explain the shortage. Within 24 hours, the article had touched off responses across the blawgosphere, from Nicole Black, Ann Althouse, Mary Dudziak, Christine Hurt, Diane Levin, and Laurie Mapp, along with Scott Greenfield and Robert Ambrogi.

The upshot of most of these posts is that the writer failed to look deeply enough into the legal blogosphere, restricting her research to the most highly trafficked sites and those of large law firms. While that’s true, I also think there’s something to be said for male law bloggers’ tendency to link to other men disproportionately more than to women. I think it’s also worth noting that if there is a serious paucity of women bloggers, it’s mostly inside of law firms, especially the larger ones. I may be verging on cynicism here, but I think that’s largely because two things law firms don’t tend to take very seriously are the careers of their women lawyers and the utility of blogs.

Several bloggers also pointed out that until this article asked the question, it had never occurred to them to think about the gender of the other bloggers they read or linked to — it was of the sheerest irrelevance. My own blogroll includes bloggers like Carolyn Elefant, Susan Cartier Liebel, Connie Crosby, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, and Penelope Trunk, but until I made that list, I had never thought about the male-female breakdown. Ditto for the people I follow on Twitter, including most of the above as well as Victoria Pynchon, Mina Sirkin, Donna Seale, Kelly Phillips Erb, and too many others to list. But just because I haven’t thought about blawggers’ gender before isn’t an excuse to not think about it now, and I’m glad for the opportunity to learn about more women law bloggers worth reading.

But what really struck me among all the posts on this topic, and what I’m really interested in writing about today, came from Ann Althouse. Responding to the suggestion in the original article that women avoid blogging because they’re more prone to professional or personal attack, she wrote: “The internet is not going to coddle and comfort you. In fact, the internet wants you out of here.” [Emphasis in original] While the delivery is a little harsh, I think this is a powerful and profound statement, and every lawyer who intends to build her or her profile and brand online needs to be aware of it and accept it.

The blogosphere is intensely, almost fanatically competitive. There are millions upon millions of blogs out there, and each of them needs readers’ attention to survive the way you and I need air. There’s only so much of that attention to go around, producing what Davenport and Beck called the attention economy — the decision to view or listen to something has become a significant economic choice. You could also analogize the blogosphere to the Cambrian explosion, an unprecedented and unexplained flourishing of life on Earth on a massive scale about 500 million years ago. Either way, there are only so many resources to go around, and if you really want to make a go of it in this environment, you’re in for a tremendous fight.

Some of the sadder (to me) comments in all the posts about women law bloggers came from lawyers who started blogs and gamely maintained them for as long as they could, but eventually gave up after generating very little traffic and attention. I’m a writer at heart, and that heart goes out to anyone with a manuscript unfinished or a blog abandoned because they grew discouraged by the lack of audience interest. But while some of these projects could have been saved with better marketing or friendlier circumstance, many failed on the merits — either their subject or their style, or both, just wasn’t compelling enough to earn attention credits from an increasingly busy, demanding and fickle readership.

I’m not suggesting it should be any other way, mind you — if all the 900,000 blog posts in the last 24 hours actually got read, the global economy (such as it is these days) would lurch to a sudden halt. And every environment throws up obstacles to ensure that only the truly talented and committed reach anything like a rarefied atmosphere: Seth Godin’s The Dip talks about how medical schools create the buzzsaw barrier of Organic Chemistry in undergrad to weed as many people as possible out of the pre-med stream. These are realities of every competitive environment, and they apply to the blawgosphere too.

Law blogging proponents can be a little cavalier in their standard recommendation that you “start a blog” — I’ve certainly been guilty of that sometimes. But lawyers who want to use blogs to build their brands and promote their profiles need to understand just how challenging a path they’re choosing. Even assuming you’re a really good writer and you know your subject area really well, you need to be realistic about these cold facts:

* Other lawyers are blogging about this too. Unless you’ve chosen an extreme niche, your chosen field is very likely already occupied or soon will be. Check out all the blogs tracked at the ABA Blawg Directory or LexMonitor for a sober assessment of your playing field.

* The noise level on the Internet is staggering. Everyone on the Net is yammering at everyone else to pay attention to them, and users are always on the edge of being overwhelmed. Legitimate SEO strategies are indisputably important, but appreciate that your ideal readership is always a little deafened.

* Your readers read more than just blogs. This is the single biggest mistake in every publishing medium: magazines assume that their readers only read other magazines, newspapers think they only compete with newspapers, bloggers compare themselves only to other bloggers. Everything that is printed, broadcast, sung, illustrated or otherwise meant for a sensory target is part of the attention economy. You’re up against YouTube and Extreme Home Makeover whether you like it or not.

* The Internet demands commitment. Millions of blogs are abandoned every day, and the Net brushes them aside like litter. What the Net wants from you is a sign that you’re willing to stick it out through the bad times (and there’ll be bad times, believe me). Blog readers don’t just check out the post Google has led them to — they check out how long you’ve been posting and how frequently you post. If you’re in for the long and steady haul, readers are likelier to trust you and return to you.

Look, I’m a strong believer in the Chuck Jones school of creative motivation. Jones was once asked whether his Warner Brothers cartoons were meant for children or adults. “I don’t draw them for children and I don’t draw them for adults,” he replied. “I draw them for me.” At the end of the day, the number of people in your Delighted Audience has to be at least one: you. And nobody has ever said a blog is only as worthwhile as the number of readers it has: Rees Morrison, for one, has said he blogs as much for his own records and to facilitate his own thinking, and doesn’t blog to attract clients or generate work.

But if you want to blog as a way to promote yourself — and I really think every lawyer should at least seriously consider doing so — also seriously consider that it’s not as easy as falling off a log. You’ll find yourself, as we all tend to do, checking your daily visits log and counting the number of RSS subscribers, and wondering how to raise them. You’ll find yourself (or a partner, colleague or spouse) inevitably asking about the ROI on this project. You’ll wonder why, even with good content and steady visitors, you (or even your whole gender) can seem invisible to people writing about the legal blogosphere.

If you’re not prepared for this beforehand, then blogging can be a deeply dispiriting experience. But if you are prepared, and you’re both realistic about the challenge and committed to the goal, then the rewards can be extraordinary. The Internet doesn’t want you here –but you can want to be here more.

Posted in Diversity, Marketing, Technology, Uncategorized

Women vs men in the blogosphere

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:34:00 GMT

In a prime example of trying desperately to create an issue out of thin air, law.com has posted an article decrying the lack of female law bloggers. Besides the fact that this is false, the real question is "who cares?" Anyone can create a blog (and sadly, they do), so, making a gender issue out of blog authorship is nothing short of stupid.