UMKC Women’s Center uses blogging to discuss issues that are critical to women and to gender equality. Topics that have been addressed in the past have ranged from eating disorders, body image, raising awareness about violence against women, women’s health issues, feminism, and even the Twilight series. All of these topics that are written are just as varied as the staff who writes them. We all have different interests and different perspectives. And as students, we bring knowledge from different fields of study allowing for our topics to appeal to a wide range of people. We have the opportunity to choose an issue that we find interesting or important, and then to talk about it and share it through our writing.
I just read an article, which explains how important blogging is for women and why women trust blogs. It says in the article, “We are losing trust in the government, politicians, the media and many corporations. But as it turns out, we trust each other.” Blogging is a way to converse with other women and discuss any topic from cooking a meal to politics. And blogging is a way for women to open up to other women and know that somewhere out there, someone has the same interest or view that they do. According to the article, 36.2 million women participate in the blogosphere and they are using it to share information or retrieve information on a variety of topics. Moreover, women are turning to blogs before they hit the stores. A recent survey found that half of women that were surveyed said blogs influenced their shopping decisions. For many women, blogging is a more fulfilling way of interacting than they get from their PDA’s, iPods, happy hours, so instead of texting on their iPhone a lot of women, it seems, are typing on their blogs.
Before I started blogging for the Women’s Center, I used to think that it was just another way to pass the time. Something someone did to rant or babble about themselves – nothing I would ever be interested in. I never thought it was another form of social media that connected people. But now I see that women feel more comfortable writing blogs and commenting on them and rely on it as a way of building relationships with other women out in the blogosphere. More women are realizing how freeing blogging can be rather than keeping everything to themselves. Blogging is turning into a feminist phenomenon that will continue growing as more women enter the blogging world.