Blogs, politics, and gender

Henry Farrell argues that during the current campaign season, blogs will funnel more money to Democrats than Republicans. His reasoning:

Regardless of whether the blogosphere tilts left or tilts right (your guess is as good as mine), the most-read blogs on the liberal-left side of the spectrum are much more closely aligned with the Democratic party apparatus than the blogs on the right are with the Republican machine. They also have the precedent of MoveOn, and of the Dean movement to build on. Rightbloggers, even the ones who support the administration, tend to self-identify as libertarians rather than Republicans, and maintain a little distance from the formal aspects of the Republican party.

Meanwhile, the political part blogosphere apparently does share one common trait — gender. Brian Montopoli at CJR’s Campaign Desk writes:

Women are responsible for as little as four percent of political blogs — “sites devoted to politics, current events, foreign policy, and various ongoing wars” — according to the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). When it comes to politics and campaign commentary, in other words, the blogosphere looks a little like your high school chess club: Even though everyone’s invited to join, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone posted a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the classroom door.

Just for the record, I was not part of the chess club when I was in high school — my captaincy of the math team took up far too much of my time. More seriously, Montopoli seems to go a bit off the rails at the end:

If you accept the premise of the blogosphere as a true meritocracy, a place where our intellectual (and emotional) impulses can flourish unchecked, then you’re buying into the concept of the blog world as a window into human nature. If that’s the case, the blogosphere — with perhaps just four percent female participation in poliblogs — shows us that while women are just as interested as men in spouting off, they’re fundamentally less interested than men in spouting off about politics. But if the blogosphere comes freighted with the same cultural considerations and institutional biases that weigh down the rest of the world, then blogs offer us no more window into our natural inclinations than the mainstream media — and the blogosphere’s claim to be the great equalizer is nothing more than the emperor’s newest clothes.

(link via here). A follow-up question — what about the readers of political blogs? Do they skew disproportionately male as well? That seems to be the (unfortunate) case among my commenters. [Maybe that’s because they don’t like posts like this one?–ed. I’ll grant that as a possibility — but I have yet to receive a single complaint on that front.] Let me know what you think. UPDATE: Megan McArdle, Amanda Butler, and Laura at Apt. 11D weigh in on the gender question.