Blogging up babyWho's most poised to break "blogging's glass ceiling?" The New York Times pegs BlogHer, the yearly convention and ad network, as the center of discussion on how women ought to get more attention online — and the cash that comes with it. The core issue is that there are at least two very divergent camps within BlogHer.
... though women and men are creating blogs in roughly equal numbers, many women at the conference were becoming very Katie Couric about their belief that they are not taken as seriously as their male counterparts at, say, Daily Kos, a political blog site. Nor, they said, were they making much money, even though corporations seem to be making money from them.
This is exactly why some women won't sacrifice femininity for fame, whether blogging about typical "women's" topics, or doing so while looking typically womanly. Take Julia Allison as the illogical extreme: a woman more blogged about than who blogs herself, but who can't seem to launch a business without it being about Julia. Allison and other me-bloggers far less shameless about their attention-grab are what drives women to disavow ladybloggers almost altogether. Yet these women find a home at BlogHer, as well — like Patricia Handschiegel, an entrepreneur who can both sell her smarts and get chatty on her personal blog about dresses, parties and similar froth. Neither of these camps need be exclusive: ambivalence is one reason why women come out for things like BlogHer in the first place. No one should have to give up girliness to get ahead. But to produce the woman Kos, the woman Arrington? We'll have to let go of this blogging business being all about ourselves. (Photo by Jessica Brandi Lifland/New York Times)