It seems likely, though, that this is generally true of blogs that feature debate on topics such as politics and economics. I attempted a little over a year ago to find some data on it. I didn't go through fully in this search, and I haven't time now to update these references:
Blog gender theories.
Here is a longer study (pdf) using language analysis. I haven't read it all, but there's an interesting part on pages 3 and 4 about preferred topics of men and women.
This is rather different, but may throw light. It's a gender distribution study for the major social networks (where we see twice as many women as men).
This is a Pew report on gender differences in (American) Internet use.
The picture I got from this (though others may draw different conclusions) was that political blogs get a M-F distribution of maybe 70-30, while social networks see the order inversed.
Please don't take this for an "everything's all right" claim. It's just an attempt at offering some light-shedding data and discussion from outside ET. Again, it's from 2008 so it's not fresh out of the fridge.
<note to self: stop speaking French>
Though it's sometimes impossible to know who is male or female behind a nick,
For most of the active commenters we do know.
Please don't take this for an "everything's all right" claim. It's just an attempt at offering some light-shedding data and discussion from outside ET.
Data is always good.
Unfortunately, I have no time to dig into the substance right now - I have to go and catch a train, and probably won't have internet over the weekend.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
