I’ve ended last week’s poll of the week and have put up a new one. This one is to test a theory that I’m working on. I’m not going to tell you what it is until later in the week once I see some of the results coming in.
The question simply is – ‘are you male or female?’
With regards to the last poll – I’ll give you the full results of it early next week. Thanks to the 1500 or so people who voted – the results were fascinating.
Most of them are male. Hmm…wonder what next project that you want to do with the results from the poll…
no offence, but what about the others that you’ve left out? My kind of people? Gays and Lesbians?
Sorry for being a little off topic, but I do hope you include those categories. Or at least set up another option – “others”
Since when is “gay” or “lesbian” a gender?
Hmm, why is “gay” there? Aren’t they either male or female too..?
Gender is different to sexuality.
the ‘gay’ category was there because someone added it – I forgot to turn the ‘add category’ feature off the poll. It’s now back to male and female.
I deleted the ‘gay’ category because it does not fit with the question about gender.
Darren – exactly. So how did those other two options slip in?
An “other” category to the question of whether you’re male or female?
Now that’s funny!
Lol. that’s crappy, I mean, even a gay or lesbian has a gender :)
I thought most bloggers are female. Cos they have more time at home, but then, I think I was wrong.
miriguy: you forgot their innate fear of computers ;)
brem: yeah, maybbe you are right. but I saw a rise of stay-at-home mums that are doing well with their blogs. I saw quite a lot of them, and I enjoy their posts..
Maybe they are not here. Lol.
^^ Yup, noone calls ‘computergirl’ :-) ^^
Most blogger might be female, but most who read ProBlogger might not.
Well, someone already came up with the “other” idea I was going to suggest. Though I suspect no-one here will actually qualify for that option!
Perhaps a none of the above option? transgendered people would be neither I’d guess.
Once you’ve done the poll, I’d be interested in a follow-up poll that asks what % of the female bloggers are stay/work-at-home-moms. Just because I’m curious.
I am curious!
[quote]Most of them are male.[/quote]
Hmm,man,I agree with you.
I have read a lot recently that there are more men blogging, mostly due to the fact that the ‘geeks’ started this whole thing.
I think it’s changing… I’ve just tallied my list of blogs(not complete, missing quite a few livejournal and myspace ones I think) http://www.enjoyperth.net/links
and it’s 50/50!!!
I don’t think the Problogger poll will reflect this though (though I do expect it to even out a bit more…).
I also think there’s more females writing ‘personal’ journals and more males writing about ‘geeky’ stuff and problogging.
But as I said, I really think it’s all changing!
Interesting how many seem to automatically assume a preponderance of males. A great many of the archetypal computer nerds don’t spend time writing. A great many of the male bloggers I’ve become acquainted with are not technical guys at all … although, of course, some are. I know a number of software developers too. I used to have many working for me under contracts. The three top freelancers I know have degrees in geography, philosophy and English.
My wife and I are both stay at home business owners and both bloggers (with small but steady incomes). My wife is the one who introduced me to Problogger. I saw a headline about “some guy” who was earning six figures and decided I wouldn’t even go look to see what I assumed to be some sort of get rich scam. A day later she forwarded me a link and advised I had better take a look. We opened our Adsense account the next day ;-).
I think that there are a few obstacles for most people. Most people I know (that don’t blog) think they have nothing to blog about. This self-limiting idea is holding them back from even considering.
The same is true about for example wikipedia, less then 1% of the visitors edit pages. Many times I’ve talked with people who where sure that they found a mistake and knew the beter answer, but the idea that *they* could correct it just never came to them. That’s just not the kind of people they think the are.
So bloggers that visit this website is a very specially and self-selected group.
The reaction of an audience is very different towards male then to female bloggers. This difference is reaction is common though-out the world: Most males and females have very different experiences in this regard from childhood onward.
If the succes of MySpace (and other “walled gardens”) is any indication then I think that (in general) female bloggers tend to limit their audience to friends and family: People they know and trust. Where-as males usually don’t have these considerations, mainly because they haven’t had the same kind of experiences that most females have.
OMG, I can’t believe that the difference in percentage is so great. Women reading here is close to one-third of the males. I personally know more female bloggers than male. Hmmm…maybe females aren’t that ‘keen’ in making money via blogging.
I feature blogging designers, and by far I’ve found that the majority are male.
I’ve always wondered about this, so am curious where Darren will be taking his poll.
Note: I do realise there are a lot of women bloggers around.
Just check out http://www.blogher.org/ and http://www.blogsbywomen.org/blog-search/
cat
To be truly complete, a gender poll could read:
Female
Male
M-F Transgender
F-M Transgender
Intersex
Other
None of your business!
Darren – is this a clever way to find out your readership demographics to help with targeted advertising!? (not that I would care – mind you – I think most of your ideas are brilliant and quite helpful to me!)
I believe that a lot of the gender bias seems to be lessening: “women are afraid of computers”, “men are more confident to write”, “women only consider their friends as an audience”, “women can write because they stay at home”, etc. It might be wishful thinking on my part. I’ve never been quite like the rest of the girls! (although I am definitely female – a different topic!)
I also hesitate to try and draw a conclusion from a raw statistic without more information (although the statistic is very intriguing).
No ulterier motives ann. Not sure how I’d target males or females with problogging type ads :-)
The reason I am asking is simply to test a theory/observation that I’d make here at ProBlogger. It’s not a biggie but so far it seems to be in line with what I thought. I’ll give it a few days before I tell what I’m testing – but it’s definately not a biggie so don’t read too much into it friends :-)
wow…what conversaton this question created! Well here’s my simple answer. I’m a girl…err…woman…and I blog!
This question is interesting. I really want to know if females are interested in blogging.
Way to go Darren!
Results are going to be weird anyway. They’ll only tell you what gender the type of reader who answers polls is likely to indicate in a gender poll.
If this blog is anything like my blogs, the commenters and respondents are a totally different beast than the readers at large. Add to that the margin of error of people lying in polls…
Can’t wait to find out what you’re really testing and theorizing aboout!
[…] WOMEN ARE THE BEST Based on my choices, is it so that women blog better? Right now Darren happens to run a poll that fits well into this topic. Looks like men overpower women in head tally, but that has never proved anything, has it? […]
I am a dude.. not a dudette…
Nice responses. I just read them all…
Now I will go do something productive like barbeque some chicken on my manly grill and think of something else to blog about.
Steve
Thanks for the survey. A few days ago, I noticed a link to my blog, where I was referred to as “her”. I am actually a “him”. Mine is an Indian name and for some reason, lot of people seem to think it is a female name. I was trying to figure out how to say that I am a male on my blog without sounding chauvenistic. Here are a few ideas I came up with:
– I can put up a picture (even though it may scare some people)
– I can say I am a male in my profile (did not sound right)
So I just updated my profile to say that I am a father of two children and live with my wife in California.
I think having a FOAF profile or something similar for every blogger may be a good idea. Hopefully that or a microformat may become a feature in a blog tool.
I’m a man named Darren. I’ve never met a female Darren before :)
Lots of weird presuppositions here in the comments. Especially:
I know a few transgender people, and they consider themselves whatever sex they chose to be. So if they were male and had a sex change, they’d consider themselves female — nothing any more or less. And the opposite is true as well. It’s really quite simple for them, and I don’t see any reason they should be singled out.
In any event, the fact that such a brain-dead simple poll could generate some of the ridiculous responses here says something about people’s desire to label others. I mean, it’s a simple question — are you male or female?
I would probably make a joke post to clarify the issue. “Contrary to popular belief, I am a guy. See? Here is my picture: <insert pic>” Something along those lines, and then jokingly reference it every now and again.
I sometimes run into a similar issue — people not knowing how to say my name, and sometimes thinking I’m a girl when they see it in writing. It’s spelled “Rian” but pronounced “Ryan” — I don’t understand the confusion. It’s like “Brian” but without the B. Heh. :p I also have a distinctly masculine writing style; I’m not sure why or how this is, but it is, you can tell a guy is writing when you read what I write.
Anyway, talk about a rambling comment… :p
I am a girl called Aishwarya.
Will my answer skew your poll?
[…] * based on results of poll at time of writing. Results were even more skewed towards men last time I checked so perhaps women bloggers just have better things to do on the weekend!) […]
Female.
But the Gender Genie thing for blogs (http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html) thinks I write like a male. =)
— J.
I am a biological female and am perfectly happy being one. However, I usually register as “male” when asked online because I don’t want to be served the inane advertisements and content directed at women. I just don’t have the stomach for all that pink inconsequential drivel. I’ll take the stock market ads and tech stuff that’s directed to the male demographic instead.
Male
I blog, I’m female, and I’m not a stay-at-home mom. I was slightly insulted by the sterotyping of female bloggers in the comments, but I suppose people can’t change their opinion unless others like me say something. So, I guess I’m letting you know we do exist = )
Au contraire, mon frere. I know a Darrin who is as female as they come. I’d describe her in vivid detail for the joy of the guys, but the disgust of the women and the transgendered/male neutered/confused folks among us. :)
Oh, and I inventoried my Chromosomes. I have a Y.
I’m female, have several blogs plus a couple of podcasts.
I’m female, have a blog and a few other websites.
Female
I took the poll and was unsurprised by the results thus far. I blog about public relations and in our community, women are the minority as well, to about the same 20 percent tune. The top bloggers comprise an even smaller percentage.
Funny thing is that in the practice of PR (offline) women make up 70 percent of the profession. I have written about this extensively and the link to my blog links directly to the most relevant article.
a little stupid poll in my opinion, but who cares…
Well, I cast my vote, since now we know that most of bloggers are male should we expect that ProBlogger will give tips how to blog about football or muscle cars? :-)
“since now we know that most of bloggers are male should we expect that ProBlogger will give tips how to blog about football or muscle cars?”
or how about …
Since we now know that the majority of bloggers who come to ProBlogger are male, does this mean that in order to enlarge his market share, Darren will now do a rethink to target female bloggers?
cat
Pussy (n°49), the second possibility is not relevant, many other blogs found that there is a majority of male readers (Rodrigo Flores (n°48), blogger is not reader, or visitor), sometimes the proportion of male readers is 90%, for tech blogs, for example.
I’m wary of survey results because many people don’t respond to them (I didn’t), so the results could be considerably off what the proportion of male to female readers of ProBlogger actually is.
I love the freedom from discrimination that is possible in the online world. It’s great to have one’s ideas, logic, information, and argument considered on their own merit, not on one’s gender, orientation, race, age, or any other potentially discriminatory element.
As for why more males than females responded, and more comment on the site, sociolinguistics professor and author Teborah Tannen has written extensively on the hesitance of females to be conversationally assertive in mixed gendered environments and the almost universal habit of males to interrupt the speech of females. Both males and females are socialized from an early age for females to be non-assertive, and males assertive in communication as well as in other areas.
Pat Gundry