Patrick McCullough recently sent us an email addressing that very issue. He writes –

“I don’t know if any women from your group follow the conversations in academic biblical studies blogs (“biblioblogs”), but we currently have one that may be of interest to you. I wonder if you might be willing to help us out.

At present, the closest thing to an “official” tally of academic biblical studies blogs is done by the Biblioblog Top 50–which puts the ratio of male to female bibliobloggers at 270 to 20. Women make up roughly 7 percent of those who blog about academic biblical studies. We have had a few conversations about this over the years but have come to no firm conclusions about why this is the case or how we should solve it.

Some explanations attempt to reason through gender preferences (women don’t like to sit in front of a computer, men are more narcissistic, etc.). But these preferences (stereotypes?) seem to relate to blogging in general and not the vast discrepancy in biblical studies specifically. I suggested that there may be a perceived risk to blogging which professionally academic women do not want to take. The person behind the Biblioblog Top 50 believes there is a “deeper, structural religious bias towards male authority.” April DeConick (perhaps the strongest, most reliable biblioblogger who happens to be a woman) believes that there is a sexism embedded within the network of biblical studies blogs, which marginalizes the blogs of women as unimportant (post one, two, three). Have a glance at this person’s post to see a timeline and links to some of the conversation happening.

I wonder if you could pose the question to your community of intelligent female bloggers, many of whom are quite well-informed about theological/spiritual/biblical matters. Why do you think there aren’t more women blogging about academic biblical studies? If you have some knowledge about biblical studies, but are not a “biblioblogger,” why not? “