Why weren’t there more women at the GodBlogCon?

And why weren’t there any women on the panels?

That last question was asked by Stacy Harp during the Friday morning plenary session at the GodBlogCon. The session was a panel discussion by David Wayne, Joe Carter, and Dr. Andrew Jackson, moderated by John Schroeder.

Well...I’d say the reason there weren’t more women at the Con is that they were probably home with their kids. I, for one, would not have been able to attend had the Con not “happened” to occur at the same time as mid-semester break at the local university, which enabled me to hire students to be with my kids for three days.

Certainly distance, expense, and schedules were factors as well.

As to why there weren’t more women on the panels, well, I guess the Con was the brainchild of men, and either they just didn’t think of it, or else the women they thought of weren’t available. Certainly other women could’ve been invited to be on the panels, and perhaps should have been. But to be honest, it doesn’t really bother me that they weren’t, because I was happy to hear whoever was speaking seeing as how they were all people I admire very much.

But yes, there could’ve been a woman or two leading the plenary sessions. There were women leading some of the breakout sessions, and one of them could’ve been me if I’d accepted the offer. Yes, I was the second call to lead a session on “women in the blogosphere” after the original call was not able to attend the conference (because she had to be home with her kids). Why didn’t I accept? Several reasons:

1) lack of time to prepare
2) my own ambivalence over the whole issue of gender focus
3) a desire to attend other sessions being offered rather than lead one myself
4) utter, abject, fear

Perhaps another reason women didn’t attend was...shyness? Don’t know; I’m just wondering. Surely I’m not the only person who struggles with wanting to connect with people yet being intimidated as all heck most of the time, and I would guess that this tends to be true of women more than men. (Oops! A focus on gender!) Also, in new situations, I would much rather sit back and observe than lead, being the incorrigible introvert that I am.

Yes, a “women in the blogosphere” session would’ve been great, and, had it been offered, I would’ve attended! It would’ve helped me connect more with the women at the conference, which is one regret I have now that it’s over. Yet I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I wish that gender solidarity didn’t have to be an issue. Maybe it’s because I’ve always wanted to equalize issues of performance between men and women, being that I’m a female professional trumpet player and there aren’t many of us. I never wanted to jump on the feminist bandwagon and go butch just so I could feel I had some power equal to that of men. I decided to just play as well as I could and let the chips fall where they may.

I approach blogging the same way. I blog very little on issues specific to women, not that that’s a prerequisite to being focused upon as a woman blogger. I realize that there are many great women bloggers who blog politics, cultural issues, science, apologetics, theology, etc. as well as the boys do. Yet it’s true that I am a woman and, as such, am also a wife and mother, and those things certainly affect who I am as well as my blogging.

I guess I don’t have any answers. I do hope to see more women leading discussions at future conferences, and hope to have a chance to speak myself. Though at the rate I’m going I'll probably never build enough of a reputation to keep myself in the running. Shy people usually don’t get asked to do stuff and that’s understandable. Oh well. Guess I’ll just keep being myself and let the chips fall as they may... (Keep reminding me that I said that, OK?)