Stirring the gender pot in podcasting

By Jan Kabili

Wired News has stirred the gender pot by alleging, in the wake of this month's Portable Media and Podcasting Conference (PMPC), that podcasting has become a men's club. Reporter Steve Freiss' conclusion that "women warm the podcast bench" is based on some pretty flimsy facts:

  • Only 15% of the 2,000 attendees at PMPC were women.

    • This doesn't mean that women aren't involved in or interested in podcasting. It's more likely that women are less attracted than men to techy conferences like this one. There was also a low turnout of women at Gnomedex this summer (where I was one of the 11% of attendees who were female). The very next month, hundreds of women bloggers enthusiastically attended the BlogHer Conference, proving that there are lots of women interested in and participating in blogging. I'd wager the same is true of podcasting.

  • The president of Women in Technology International, which had a booth at PMPC, is a man.

    • Said president inherited his role from his mother, who founded the organization. 'Nuff said.

More after the jump...
 

  • Podcaster Leo LaPorte said in a PMPC keynote that 97% of his audience is male.

    • Leo LaPorte's podcast is This Week in Tech.
    It's reasonable to assume that it's the subject matter, rather than the fact that this is a podcast, that is failing to attract women to LaPorte's offering.

  • Yahoo senior product manager Joe Hayashi said 85 percent of folks who use the search engine's recently released podcast directory are men.
    It would be interesting to know how Yahoo made this determination.
    Regardless, Yahoo! Podcasts is still in Beta. So I would hesitate to rely on it as the definitive authority for measuring the podcast audience.
  • "Several" of the most prominent women in podcasting either co-host programs with their husbands or boyfriends or were thrust into the craft by their men.
    For every female co-host, there are plenty of women with their own podcasts. Just take a look at this growing list of women podcasters or these blogs by women in podcasting.

Any women podcasters, or admirers of same, out there who'd like to comment?


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