Questionnaire on African Women Bloggers

For African women who blog on issues that are of particular relevance to other women on the continent, please take some time to answer the following questions. I'm working on an article on how African women are using blogs to promote gender equity and empower themselves. Don't be scared! It looks like a lot of questions, but you'll zoom right through them -I promise!

I have an online survey up now, so you can take the survey there, or if you prefer, you can copy and paste the survey below into a Word document and fill-in your answers before emailing to me (oreblogging@yahoo.com).

General Information:

• What is your age?
• What is your country of residence?
• What is your highest level of educational qualification?
• Are you currently studying?
• What is your current employment status?
• What is your occupation?

Background Information on your Blog:

• What is your blog URL?
• When did you begin this/your blog (month and year)?
• How frequently do you update this blog?

Your Purpose of Blogging:

• Did you start this blog with specific topic(s) in mind to write about?
  • If ‘Yes’, what were the topics?


• Indicate on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being ‘Very Important’ and 5 being ‘Very Unimportant’) how important it is to you to empower other women through your blog?


• Do you identify yourself as a feminist?
  
  • If ‘No’, what are your reasons?


• If you hope to empower women through your blog, how do you do this? (e.g. Bring to light issues of in justice against women; Foster a discussion between you and your readers; Mobilise people for specific social action; Share your perspective on women’s issues; Other – Please explain).

Blogs by African Women:

• How do you think blogs can be used to promote women’s equity and empowerment?


• What would you say are the most commonly-discussed topics on the blogs by African women that you have visited?


• Do you feel that there are enough blogs by African women that address issues of gender equity, feminism, social development (especially as it pertains to women) and/or general issues of women’s empowerment?
  
  • If you feel there aren’t enough blogs that deal with these issues, what do you think are the reasons for this?
  
  
  • How do you think more African woman can be encouraged to blog about these issues?


• Please name 5 blogs that address these issues (include the URLs).
  
  • What do you like about these blogs?


• What are the unique features of blogs (or other web 2.0* tools) that make them suitable for raising issues of women’s empowerment?


• Please name some organisations that you know of which use blogs or other web 2.0 tools for collaborative project work.


• Generally speaking, what are some of the factors that you think might prevent many African women from blogging?

Please send your responses to oreblogging@yahoo.com. Feel free to forward to any African women bloggers you know of who are using their blogs to promote women's equality and empowerment. Meanwhile I might try and put this into a proper survey tool.

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* Web 2.0 refers to proposed second generation Internet-based services that promote online collaboration and sharing of information among users e.g. blogs, wikis, social networking sites (e.g. MySpace), tags, video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Google Video), photo-sharing sites (e.g. Flickr). (Check Wikipedia for more info.)