BlogHer Debate: Women and Blog A-lists

Posted on July 30, 2005

At the BlogHer conference they are debating the importance of the various blogging A-lists and how there are not very many women bloggers on them. They are also debating what things women should do and what rules women should or should not follow to get on these A-lists. The A-lists can be important to a blogger because they have become a way of recirculating traffic through inclusion in the A-list.

Several bloggers have joined the debate with posts on their blogs including Surfette, Blogaholics and Social Mom.

Here is a list of a few of the debate questions:

Does the lack of links from link-counters and the so-called A-list represent real, institutional barriers to entry or contrived barriers to entry--economically, personally, professionally, culturally?
Does playing by the existing rules of blog link-counters shout down alternative, diverse and new voices? Are we participating in our own demise?
Do we owe it to ourselves and/or other women to win this game even if we don't personally care about the lists? Could separate ever really make us equal?
f we want a meritocracy, do we need to code one ourselves?