I've never formed an opinion about a blog based on the sex of the author. To be quite honest, there are several music-related blogs I read daily that could be written by a man or a woman and I wouldn't have any idea one way or another.

That's one of the great things about music blogs (mp3 and otherwise): in no way does the subject matter depend upon your sex. Yet, it's difficult to find a well-known, frequently visited music blog written by a woman. I've listed several on our own Blogher blogroll, but only four or so are commonly linked to. Only two are strictly music [ie no personal entries] blogs.

So what's the point?

Well, if you want to read a good music blog, you'll have no trouble finding one. Hit any of the well-known mp3 aggregators (Hype Machine is a good example) and you'll find dozens of links to wondeful music blogs. And from them you can find hundreds more. How many of those do you suppose are written by women? At my last count, about 5 out of 50.

Not that it matters in the scheme of subject matter and its importance. People should read blogs for content, and it just so happens that more men are actively blogging about music than women. But why is this the case, when music, unlike so many niche blogs that focus on a very particular subject matter that often times directly relates to the writer's sex, is such an accesible topic?

I'm sure there are hundreds of women writing about music, but I've been researching for weeks, trying to find new talent and interesting subject matter and keep rotating through the same four or five women. I've come to believe that it isn't a matter of women not writing about the subject, it's a matter of women not promoting their subject matter and really letting the web sell their hard work for them.

This is probably the case in other niches as well. No one can find women political bloggers, either. Kevin Drum discussed this topic last year, asking the question "Where are all the female op/ed bloggers?":

The political blogosphere provides another clue. Although its geeky Usenet roots were (and are) testosterone laden affairs, there are still no formal barriers to entry here, no old boys club in the usual meaning of the word. Yet if you take a look at the Blogosphere Ecosystem, which for all its faults is probably the closest thing we have to a consensus measure of popularity for political blogs, you will find exactly three women in the top 30: Michelle Malkin, La Shawn Barber, and Michele Catalano.

Those are, of course, statistics from a far from faultless source, but the numbers are staggering: only 10% of the most popular political blogs are written by women. So why aren't the political blogs by women (because we know there are a lot of them) breaking through? As the article suggests, there isn't really an old boy's club of the web holding them back, so it leaves me wondering why they aren't breaking through the way some women bloggers have managed to break through. (Wonkette came it at #33 on that list, by the way.)

There doesn't seem to be a shortage of "Mommyblogs" breaking through and garnering media attention and pro-blogging status, and there are dozens of incredible female food writers who rise to the top of their niche (just to name a couple of genres, by no means indicating that those are the only genres where women shine), but the elite blogrolls aren't reflecting those women who sit at that cusp, that moat between B List Blog and A List Blog.

Returning to the idea of an old boys club for a moment, Chris Nolan (a Blogher Advisory Board member) has argued that:

This medium was first taken up by techies. Most of them are men ... When they wonder where the women bloggers are, what they're really saying is "I don't read any women bloggers."

While this doesn't necessarily mean there is an old boys club on the web holding us down, it does mean that in order for women to get noticed on the web, they have to get noticed by men. And that, while difficult to swallow, is definitely true in at least one respect. If I want my music blog to get noticed, I need to be linked to from one of the "top" or most visited blogs in my genre. Given the current statistics (however rough) in the music/mp3 blog world, that means out of the ten or fifteen elite blogs in my genre, at least 11 of them are written by men, and I will probably need one of them (at least) to link to me if I want a big jump in traffic and recognition.

But is it all about recognition? Of course not. A woman's obscure and rarely linked-to music blog isn't pointless if it isn't recognized, but wouldn't that sort of recognition help the rest of the women trying to break into that niche? And wouldn't we want to know about her? It's important for women bloggers new to a genre that is male-dominated to get noticed and make a name for themselves because the rest of us want to know about her, too. This is my biggest stumbling block as a contributing editor for Entertainment so far: not finding women blogging about music! What I wouldn't give to find some women advertising their blogs and promoting themselves (Jax, the Rock Insider is a great example of a music blogger who knows her audience and knows how to promote herself tastefully) within these elite circles of more established blogs written by men.

Nolan is right about one thing: it's not that we aren't here (Pew actually reports that 43% of bloggers are women), it's that we're not loud enough. Am I loud enough here, surrounded by other women? Or do I need to be loud in a blogospheric (heh) room full of men to get noticed?

It's not about diversity or acceptance or even being as "good" as men who have the same content as us, it's about stepping up and working for our spot in the limelight.

This site had demonstrated that women do indeed blog, and that we are intelligent, savvy, hard-working women who juggle families, careers, writing and networking with (more often than not) ease and charm. Yet, I hope that during my time here as a contributing editor, I'll help women music bloggers make a big dent in the scheme of the global blogosphere and its hierarchy.