Wired: Women aren't podcasting

Wired News reports that just 15 percent of the 2,000 attendees were women at the first trade podcasting tradeshow, the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference.

"Any of these new, cool mediums tend to attract guys at first," ((male!) president of Women in Technology International David Leighton) said. "Right now, it's technology for technology's sake. Once we see more practical uses, we'll start seeing more women. It was that way with the internet and e-mail usage, too."

Some startling statistics reported at the conference bore out this suggestion. Leo LaPorte, host of one of the most popular podcasts, This Week in Tech, said in a keynote address that his audience is 97 percent male, according to market research. Yahoo senior product manager Joe Hayashi said 85 percent of folks who use the search engine's recently released podcast directory are men.

There are successful female-hosted podcasts out there, like Gretchen Vogelzang and Paige Heninger's MommyCast show, which landed a one-year sponsorship from paper-goods maker Dixie, and got mentions in Variety and Hollywood Reporter for their interview with the filmmakers of March of the Penguins.  Wired says women podcasters have more privacy concerns than men:

Many balk at giving out their full names for fear of being stalked. The co-hosts of The Tipsy Chicks, a Minneapolis-based podcast, halted their show for a few weeks last month, in fact, because they received menacing e-mails from a male listener who told them he knew where they lived and worked.