Women and the Written Word

I've just returned from random readings of other blogs. There are a lot of women bloggers out there. Clicking on neutral sounding blog titles, two of three were penned (that's the literary sense of penned) (as if I had any literary sense) by women. This did not come as a shock to me. I am an inveterate peruser of best seller lists and these are often dominated by the fair sex as well. (Dominated by the fair sex will be a whole nother blog.) (Nother is actually a word, or should be, but don't try to use it in Scrabble.) I'm talking the fiction best seller lists for the most part, although women are also well represented on non-fiction lists. Why, do you suppose, this is? Are women just naturally more inclined to put thought to word to paper? Are they brighter, more artistic, more creative? Or... are there just more of them with free time on their hands? Part of the reason I'm sure - because of my own completely scientific sampling of the general populace, which is to say I asked a few people - is that women read more. More, at least, of non-work related material. They are not quite as big as men on "The Subatomic Analysis of the Quartz Driven Freelinger" or "This Is Your Fuel Injector, Use It Wisely" but scan any magazine section of your neighborhood mom and pop store like Seven Eleven and you will notice that the majority of the titles are geared to women readers. Granted many of the men's mags are behind the counter but still... Pair this with the best seller thing and what I get is that women writers are writing for women readers in larger numbers than men are...well you get the point. It doesn't tell me why though, so I'm going to go with the more time on their, I mean they are smarter, scenario. Another scientific poll I have conducted reveals that the largest percentage of this blog's readers are women. This might be attributed to my having three daughters and only two sons. I'm not great at math, but come on, with three out of five readers being women- that's like, what, I'm thinking three fifths- I should probably reconsider my content. That being said... tomorrow or the next day or someday, when I write Dominated By The Fair Sex, it will feature a lot more silk and a lot less leather than originally intended. If you want the leather version you'll have to go to Seven Eleven. Behind the counter.