RE: Steemit is a Sausage Fest!
you're absolutely right @bullishmoney, I meant to add that it's still mostly "anecdotal" data, and apologize for leaving out that point. I can say that I have heard this from quite a few others, and it has been my experience as well. It's tricky to get hard evidence on this, and I'm sure you know how easy it is to manipulate even hard statistics to "prove a point" as well. It's kind of like trading, you can run all the studies and stats and backtests you want, but at the end of the day, I have yet to be able to match results obtained from outright observation and understanding of what's really going on.
Perhaps an in-depth analysis of active male versus female accounts above a certain reputation may provide more concrete insight into what quite a few of us seem to observe in various degrees.
Another interesting idea may be to analyze, say, the top few thousand recently active STEEMIT accounts over 6 months old that have at least 1 to 4 times the number of followers versus follows (to weed out those who follow everyone), and try to determine which accounts they follow are male versus female (also attempting to weed out bot accounts, of course). Unfortunately, that maybe the trickiest part, because there really is no way of automating that process that I'm aware of, since STEEMIT doesn't track accounts as male/female/bot (as far as I am aware, at least).
I can tell you though, given you mentioned "hard data" from alexa.com, my past experience is that a good portion of alexa data tends to be highly questionable as well, not to mention possibly gamed in various ways. And even if it were relatively accurate, there's really no way they could reliably assess the level of activity of the various genders on STEEMIT, or anywhere else for that matter. For reference, I offer you these links:
Link: How Accurate are Alexa, Compete, DoubleClick and Google Trends?
Link: How Does Alexa Track Traffic – Do They Really Have a Grasp of Your Traffic?
Perhaps the word "balanced" that I used wasn't quite right either. It may be more accurate to say that the ratio appears to be "constantly improving". I'd also like to add (anecdotally, of course), that when I often come across posts such as this, it really does make you think STEEMIT is onto something here...
Link: CryptoGranny says hello & thank you for your kind welcome!
Regardless, I'll definitely keep an eye out if I do come across more concrete data that can help provide a more complete picture.
I certainly hope that the ratio is improving for the better -- obviously, by engaging more women, you are utilizing essentially half of the human population. And I'm all for it because at the end of the day, without women, Steemit will get nowhere.
Alexa data may not be completely accurate, but it's useful for apples-to-apples comparisons. For example, Alexa demonstrates that Facebook has roughly a 50/50 gender mix, as do other social media platforms. One interesting point is that Infowars.com, the popular conspiracy website, skews heavily female. I didn't expect that, but it makes sense given women's penchant for juicy rumors and interesting stories.
As far as the available evidence is concerned, Steemit skews male, perhaps due to the fact that cryptos are generally male centric. That's an area that I believe is seeing improvement, to your point. I personally believe, though, that the rate needs to change dramatically because it's damn difficult to grow a social media network like Steemit by only attracting half the consumer base.
But I'm optimistic, so we'll see what happens!