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Gender equity in science blogging?
We’ve been interested to read the discussion about women and science blogging that started after The Scientist asked readers to suggest their favorite life science blogs last September - and none of the blogs reviewed were written by women. Last week, Ivan Oransky followed up on this in a blog post at The Scientist. He writes that several women bloggers were contacted for the article, but none responded.
Oranksy then writes about the gender gap in science blogging. He refers to Karen Venti’s survey of the blogs at scienceblogs.com. She found that of those bloggers who listed their gender, 22% are women. According to Oransky, the percentage of women on The Scientist’s advisory board is similar. Oransky goes on to highlight some blogs by women that he particularly likes.
We think it’s nice to see The Scientist directly address this issue. But we found most interesting the comment by Patricia Campbell of Fairer Science:
I really liked your post but wanted to remind you that when a group hasn’t been at the table, sometimes it takes more than an invitation to get them there.
Isn’t this an important point? It’s time to move beyond just saying, “Oh, we tried to get women but it didn’t work.”