Do women blog about science?

Written byIvan Oransky

| 2 min read

When we asked readers who their linkurl:favorite science bloggers;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53596/ were last year, we started the discussion by reaching out to a number of leading science bloggers. The bloggers who responded were all men, and most of the blogs they recommended were written by men. So perhaps understandably, GrrlScientist and others linkurl:wondered why we hadn't asked any women science bloggers about their favorites. ;http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/09/favorite_life_science_blogs_wh.php Well, we had. It's just that none responded to our query. When I mentioned that today at a panel on gender and race in science blogging panel at the linkurl:North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, ;http://wiki.scienceblogging.com/scienceblogging/show/Gender+and+Race+in+Science panelists gave me good advice: Next time, say so. Don't leave it up to readers to assume we left women out. Of course there are lots of women blogging about science. But only about a fifth -- 22% -- of the bloggers at www.scienceblogs.com are women, panelist Karen Ventii, who blogs there at linkurl:Science to Life, ;http://scienceblogs.com/sciencetolife found when she counted up those bloggers who identified their gender. Ventii's 22% figure resonated with me. It wasn't very far off from the percentage of women that Richard Gallagher, the editor of The Scientist, found when he linkurl:looked at our editorial advisory board;http://www.the-scientist.com/2008/01/1/15/1/ as he was writing his editorial for the January issue. That issue features a linkurl:package of stories;http://www.the-scientist.com/2008/1/1/67/1/ on women in science. One of those who has commented there is Patricia Campbell, who runs a great site called linkurl:Fairer Science. ;www.FairerScience.org One way to help women stay in science, as our linkurl:contributors have noted, ;is to highlight great work by women. So here's one example, which a Michigan State University communications manager told me about right after the session: Vanessa Hull, a grad student, is linkurl:blogging and vlogging;http://special.newsroom.msu.edu/panda/journal/index.php -- that's video-blogging -- from China, where she's chasing linkurl:pandas. ;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/53115/ She's putting together a great site. A highlight, from a section describing the bait the team uses: "Goat is an odiferous meat, picked for its 'come eat me' qualities." Onward, women science bloggers!

Do women blog about science?

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