In a series of studies, female bloggers showed that they enjoyed blogging because it made them feel empowered and part of a community, says Carmen Stavrositu, who recently completed doctoral work in mass communications at Penn State. The studies also indicated that the sheer number of visits to their blog and comments predicted their continued interest in blogging.

Last summer I conducted a survey of food bloggers which found that 85% of food bloggers are women. I also conducted interviews with food bloggers and started to get the impression that food blogging is a community dominated by women in which the relatively few men end up being disproportionately successful. But if food blogging follows the same trajectory as the teaching profession, we can expect women to occupy more of the most prominent food blogging positions over time.