It occurred to me today that just one of the many blogs I subscribe to is written by a woman; the lovely Susannah Wyeth. In an industry were 62 per cent of people are female, it would appear that women are highly unrepresented in the PR blogosphere.
Now, I know that there are female bloggers, very good ones at that such as Katya Trubilova and Eleanor Lovell, but what I’m saying is that there don’t seem to be that many. I’m not really sure why this is, but I don’t seem to be the only one that thinks it. Alena blogged about it last year in her excellent blog about PR women. But, unfortunately it would appear she stopped blogging after just three months.
Perhaps there aren’t many female bloggers because there are fewer women in senior roles in PR agencies, and I find many PR blogs are written by senior staff. Or to be a bit stereotypical, are there fewer female bloggers because women are less geeky than us menfolk. Or perhaps I’m just completely wrong and there are a lot of ladies blogging about PR. But in my recent post, I found there wan’t one female blogger in my list of the UK’s top ten PR blogs.
Earlier this year, Stephen Davies did a great post looking for student PR bloggers. This is my version:
Where are all the female PR bloggers?
Please recommend some fantastic female bloggers for me to follow or identify your own blog so I can balance out my blog intake a little. Thanks.
Female bloggers you’ve recommended:
Balancing Act
Strive Notes
Casey Leaver
Tracy Playle
Heather Yaxley
Elle
Emily Wearmouth
Emma
Please note: In the spirit of true transparency, Susannah Wyeth, works at Lighthouse PR, which is one of Rainier PR’s sister companies. I helped develop her blog and wrote about it here.
You’re on dodgy ground here Matthew.
I actually find that whilst there are very few female PRs with their own blogs there are a fair few that blog on company blogs.
Hi Dan,I agree with you that there are a lot of female PRs contributing to company or group blogs. But why are so few writing their own blogs? I don’t have the answer.
I have been introduced to Becky McMichael’s blog this week and it is well worth a visit as is Sherrilynne Starkie’s comments on Strive Notes.
http://beckymcmichael.wordpress.com/
http://strivepr.com/notes/
Thanks for the hat tip guys? My theory? Women are just too busy juggling work and home. My kids have flown the coop so I have more bandwidth than many.
Thanks for the mention Matt.
I can’t argue with your point that there aren’t many female bloggers in your list of the UK’s top ten PR blogs – and i’m not sure why that is, but I do know that there are some great female PR bloggers, some that I have had the pleasure of working with…
Casey Leaver specialises in Internal Communications: http://caseyleaver.wordpress.com/
Tracy Playle has her own company blog for Pickle Jar Communications: http://picklejarcommunications.blogspot.com/
Heather Yaxley teaches the CIPR qualifications and lectures on PR at Bournemouth University: http://greenbanana.wordpress.com/
I could think of more but those are just a few off the top of my head.
I also agree that we are less geeky than you men-folk! ; )
@Sherrilynne Not sure I agree with the maternal issue but you could be right. Though I knows lots of young female PRs who don’t have individual PR blogs or kids.
@Ellie
Thanks for the links, have added them now. I know there are a lots of women bloggers, so maybe it’s just that they don’t solely blog about PR or write individual blogs.
Thanks for the link folks. I kind of missed the first blogging wave due to being on maternity leave and out of the picture for a year and since then it has been a mixture of time/energy and not wanting to do a half-arsed job that kept me away for so long.
Although she doesn’t strictly blog about PR (more shoes than anything…), Elle at Hotwire has a blog here:
http://www.almostalady.blogspot.com/
Also check out Emily’s here (previously of Hotwire):
http://thoughts-on-everything.blogspot.com/
I’m sure there’s loads more out there
Ben
Hi Matthew, here’s a link to 10 Yetis PR blog,
http://www.10yetis.co.uk/public-relations/
Emma is one of the contributors on here, and a mighty good one at that!
(Am I biased? I work at 10 Yetis…)
Jilly
Hi Matthew,
Here is a link to some blogs from the team at Punch Communications – we have several female contributors on here.
http://www.punchcomms.com/punch-blog.html
I’ve also included the URL to my own PR blog.
http://punchcomms.blogspot.com/
Thanks,
Claire