Why Don't Female Economists Blog?

Photo: iStockphoto Collection

Eight of the top 100 male economists (according to RePEc’s rankings) write a blog. But of the 39 women who ranked in the top 1,000, none  blog.  Matthew Kahn examines this disparity, writing, “A Household Production Theory of leisure would posit that men have more leisure time than working women and that nerdy guys spend more time reading and writing blog posts (such as this one). If women who work are also providing more time in ‘home production’ in cooking and rearing children then the time budget constraint will bind.”  How big of a problem is this?  Is blogging really a valuable pasttime?  Kahn thinks it is: “The shrewd academic uses his blog to market his ideas and to ‘amplify’ his new academic results. This is a type of branding … If women are not participating in this sector, then excellent women are losing certain opportunities that the blogger class takes for granted.” Hunches/theories?