November 14, 2008

Equality Watch: Women in the Blogosphere

Jessica Wakeman, friend and former staffer at the Huffington Post took a look at how women are faring on the front page of her former site for FAIR.

Answer, not too good.

The site highlights 13 "featured blog posts" on the home page at a time, and that selection is updated regularly. Extra! recorded those featured bylines twice every weekday for nine weeks and coded them by gender.* During the study period (7/7/08–9/5/08), only 255 of 1,125 bylines—23 percent—belonged to women.

The Post does seem to be making a conscious effort to include women's voices; despite the low percentages, the study found at least one female byline on the home page at all times. But if there is indeed such an effort, it stops far short of parity. Of the 89 times bylines were checked during the study, not once did the number of women's bylines equal those belonging to men.
This is important because all the lefties read the Huff Post and I for one benefit from it when I post my stories on there.

Arianna- you gotta do better.

Huffington Post Mutes Women's Voices (FAIR)