According to Alexa there is only a very slight male bias in twitter usage. My view is that the quest for influence is more of a male characteristic and therefore on average men are more interested building followers than women. The language even suggests that networking has been a male dominated activity and if the old boys did it why should we be surprised that the new boys do too.
In the light of this imbalance it is excellent news that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has appointed a woman to be its first ever Chief Executive Officer. The Director General post which it replaces had been a male preserve. When Jane Wilson joins on 4 October to sit alongside CIPR President Jay O’Connor both the top permanent role and the highest elected office will be held by women. Jane, originally from Glasgow, has extensive experience in PR and marketing, including leadership roles at First Ford in Scotland, Scottish Media Group and Capital Radio. “Jane is an exceptional communicator whose experience spans media, public affairs, investor relations, internal communications, policy and marketing” said president Jay O’Connor. “Jane is a strong leader with an innate understanding of PR and the experience and enthusiasm to lead the Institute on behalf of members and the profession.”
PR and the Social Web 
That is a really interesting point. The basic list was one provided by 72Point and they were I think just looking at senior people in the industry on twitter. Whilst women are vey well represented in PR, they are less so at the more senior levels probably for all the usual bad old reasons. However, I think your point is much more interesting about men perhaps being more interested in being seen as influential. But we also measure trust and engagement on tweetlevel which are more about listening and responding on twitter…less traditional male preserves perhaps? We will crunch the numbers again to see if they bear that out.
Interesting post. My original list was based on senior level PRs within PRWeek’s Top 100 agencies. I have no doubt over-looked some important people and wouldn’t claim the list is 100 per cent conclusive, however I did notice during my research that very few females from leading PR agencies are using Twitter to gain influence.
Interestingly – I stumbled across a host of Twitter accounts for female MDs and Directors – but many of them hadn’t tweeted for months – or hadn’t tweeted anything other than “trying this Twitter thing out”. I didn’t include those in my list.
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