Interesting op-ed in today’s Inside Higher Ed:  Against Phalloblogocentrism, by Scott McLemee:

I had photocopied an article from the summer 2006 issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly called “The Gendered Blogosphere: Examining Inequality Using Network and Feminist Theory.” … The authors, Dustin Harp and Mark Tremayne, are both assistant professors of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. “Sampling over one year from blog rankings,” they note, “we found that 10% of the top [political] bloggers were women.”

They consider various explanations of why this might be, but conclude that “the linked nature of blogs” has had a skewing effect given certain tendencies familiar to network theorists. “Original players in any network have an advantage,” write Harp and Tremayne; “the longer you have been around, the more links you are likely to acquire. In the 1990s men outnumbered women on the Web by a sizable margin. While that is no longer true, the early advantage may continue to grow and snowball. But this explanation alone cannot explain the pattern.” A “second principle of network growth — preferential attachment — may [also] be responsible,” they suggest. … “In attempting to ‘subvert the hyperlink hierarchy,’” as Harp and Tremayne conclude, “women bloggers may be unwise to remove all links to the top male bloggers because linking tends to be reciprocal behavior. But positive action is needed. More links between and among women bloggers and others who understand the importance of inclusive spheres of discourse will be a step in the right direction.”