Women and Skepticism

If you’ve ever been to a meeting of skeptics, chances are you’ve noticed a big gap between the number of men and the number of women in attendance. When I started this blog I remember trying to think of what would set my point of view apart from the thousands of other skeptical blogs out there. All I could think of was that it might be interesting that I was formerly a believer of many of the things I now criticize, but it took some comments on my gender to make me realize that being a female skeptical blogger is actually pretty rare.

I’ve never gone and counted, but in my anecdotal experience most skeptical, atheist, and science-related blogs are written by men. So why is this? Skeptifem recently blogged about this, and her thinking was that it’s because women are busier, as we are generally tasked with looking after the kids or the home. I have no doubt that this contributes to the lack of ladies at skeptical gatherings, but I think there has to be more to it than that, otherwise we should expect women to also be underrepresented at things like Mind, Body, Spirit Festivals and in Church activities, no? Thankfully, PZ Myers recently posed the question on his blog:

So I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of telling you my opinion, I’m going to forgo the essential principle of blogging (which is “Me! Me!”) and just ask people, especially women, to leave links to their godless/skeptical feminist blog or make suggestions or gripe or tell me what these stupid male-dominated conventions have to do to correct the imbalance.

There was a lot of interesting discussion, so I recommend looking at the comments. Personally, I think it largely has to do with it being less socially acceptable for a woman to be outspoken, confrontational, and intellectual. I’m not sure what the solution is to this issue, maybe you can post your suggestions in the comments, but I think that promoting female skeptics is a good place to start. If more women are seen to be participating in skepticism at least online, then maybe we won’t be seen as a novelty simply by virtue of our gender.

So I’ve gone through the comments on that thread on Pharyngula and compiled this list of skeptical blogs/podcasts/websites that happen to be created by women (hopefully I didn’t miss any, there were over 600 comments). Enjoy!

• 4.5 Billion Years of Wonder
• Almost Diamonds
• Ancestor’s Trail
• Angie the Anti-Theist (her YouTube Channel)
• Ashley F. Miller
• Bad Language
• Bastion of Sass
• Blag Hag
• Butterflies & Wheels
• Curiosity Aroused (Podcast)
• Deficio Mens
• Design. Build. Play.
• Doubtful Daughter
• Finding My Feminism
• Feministe
• Football, Philosophy, and the Natural World
• Glasgow Aspie
• Greta Christina
• Heaving Dead Cats
• Jadehawk
• The Journal of the Innkeeper
• Just a Whisper in the Wind
• Just Lisa
• Kajed Heat
• Ladies who do Skepticism
• Miss Infidel
• The Monster’s Ink
• Multicollinearity
• Pandagon
• Petticoat Infidel (YouTube)
• Podblack Cat
• Puzzled Ponderer
• Quiche Moraine
• Secular Cafe (Forum)
• She Thought
• Skepchick
• The Skepdoc
• The Skeptic’s Book of Pooh-Pooh
• Skeptopia
• Stinkin’ Thinkin’
• Teenage Atheist
• This Good Life Goes On
• Token Skeptic (Podcast)
• Violetta Crisis

Feel free to add more links in the comments!

I also want to take this opportunity to say that I’ve been wanting to find other contributors to this blog since my posts are so sporatic, and this whole topic of women in skepticism has made me think that it would be great to get some other women posting on my blog. If you’re interested (even if you want to cross-post from your own blog), shoot me an email through my contact page.

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