If you’d like to listen to this article, you can check out the full podcast episode here. 

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How Money Contributed to YouTube’s Gender Gap

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From the rise of the internet to today’s booming creator economy, women have played central roles as creators. But as platforms have evolved and monetization models have matured, women, particularly on YouTube, have been sidelined. The growing gender gap in earnings on YouTube highlights broader systemic challenges around monetization, negotiation, and societal attitudes. Here’s a closer look at how money and monetization trends on YouTube have fueled this divide.

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The Origins of Monetization in the Creator Economy: Heather Armstrong and the Mommy Bloggers

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Heather Armstrong was an outspoken mom who, accidentally pioneered the model for how creators could make money from their content.

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Heather was one of the first and most successful “mommy bloggers”. She started her blog, Dooce.com in 2001, where she documented her life, parenting experiences, and personal struggles on her blog with humor, candor, and a very unique writing style. 

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A year after launching her blog, Heather made headlines when she was fired from her day job after writing about people in her workplace in various blog posts. Heather quickly gained a massive following of loyal readers who appreciated her unique account of parenthood. She shared her experiences about giving birth, her struggles with depression and cancer, and also her life living as a former Mormon. When Time Magazine listed Dooce as one of its top 25 blogs, they shared some great examples of her signature writing style, including: 

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 "Sometimes when I'm trying to roll out of bed in the morning I'm like, whose boobs are these?"

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Or: 

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“Five years ago at this exact moment a wall-eyed anesthesiologist was sticking an enormous needle in my back in order to administer an epidural. To celebrate the anniversary of this event I made cupcakes.”

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Heather Armstrong was crass, funny, and super relatable. And in the early 2000s, readers loved her for it. As Heather navigated the uncharted waters of creating content and building an online audience, she made a daring decision in 2004 – to run ads on her blog. Little did she know that this bold move would ignite a tidal wave of backlash from fans who questioned her right to monetize her platform. In a world where tech and politics blogs were running ads without a second thought, the notion of a mom profiting from her stories sparked outrage. 

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Many felt that incorporating advertisements into her blog would compromise its authenticity and undermine the personal connection they felt with her. Some accused her of "selling out" or prioritizing profit over her original content and community.

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The backlash was intense and deeply personal for Armstrong. She faced criticism not just for her decision to run ads but also for her personal life choices and parenting decisions, which she shared openly on her blog. The experience was emotionally taxing. Armstrong found herself at the center of a heated debate about the intersection of personal expression and commercialization on the Internet.

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But Heather didn’t shy away. She leaned into running ads and - what happened? She became hugely successful. By 2009, her blog had 8.5 million readers each month, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, was earning $40,000 a month from banner ads. The New York Times crowned her the “queen of the mommy bloggers.” That same year, Forbes named Armstrong one of its 30 most influential women in media, alongside Arianna Huffington, Tyra Banks, and Oprah. Her blog became so successful that her husband quit his job to help manage the site. 

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Now, Heather didn’t know it at the time, but her decision to be the first mommy blogger to run ads on her site, actually became a blueprint for the creator economy, showing how independent creators could work with brands to generate income from their content.

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As tech journalist Taylor Lorenz noted, “These mommy bloggers …were really the first kind of content creators…they would monetize their content, they would do sponsored content.” Armstrong and her peers blazed a trail that showed how women could earn a living online, paving the way for what we now call the creator economy. Yet, despite this early female-led success, today’s landscape on YouTube tells a very different story.

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Women lacking at the very top of YouTube 

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At ThoughtLeaders, we analyzed 38 million YouTube channels to identify the top 50 individual creators by subscribers, excluding musicians, brands, and corporations, and uncovered a striking gender disparity. Among these top creators, only seven are female, and of those, four are children, leaving just three adult women in YouTube’s top 50. This gender gap is unique to YouTube, as other platforms show far greater female representation. On Instagram, women constitute 54% of the top 50 creators, while on TikTok, they account for nearly 50%. In contrast, women make up a mere 6% of YouTube's top creators.

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So, even though early female influencers blazed the trail for navigating how to blend personal expression and business online, a disparity in earnings between male and female creators quickly appeared. And this earnings gap has proven very difficult to close. But why?  Why is it that despite their important contributions to the creator economy, women make so much less money than men on YouTube? 

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In this article, we explore how YouTube’s monetization model and the gender pay gap contribute to its gender disparity.

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The Rise of YouTube and its Early Monetization Models

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Founded in 2005, YouTube brought video-sharing to the masses and became a breeding ground for creativity and community. By 2007, YouTube introduced the Partner Program, enabling creators to earn a share of the ad revenue their videos generated. Suddenly, YouTube was more than just a platform for sharing funny cat videos — it was a place where creators could make money.

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In these early days, women continued to thrive. Creators like Brooke Allison Brodack, known as Brookers, became the platform’s first viral stars, attracting hundreds of thousands of views with her comedic videos. Similarly, Lonelygirl15, a vlog series about a young woman’s life, held the title of YouTube’s most-subscribed channel for over six months in 2006. Even after coming out as a “fake” vlog, the series evolved and continued, with the creators continuing the project into 2008. Lonelygirl15 is often cited as one of the world’s first web series, and another pioneer of the “vlogging” format. It also proves that, scripted or not, YouTube viewers were drawn to content centered around a woman. 

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These early success stories suggested a promising future for women on YouTube. But as YouTube’s monetization model matured, a shift occurred, one that increasingly rewarded male-dominated content categories like gaming, tech, and pranks. With each algorithm tweak and monetization expansion, YouTube's structure subtly favored male creators, driving a growing gender divide in both audience reach and revenue.

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The Algorithm: Content, Engagement, and Gender

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The introduction of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm in 2011 drastically changed how content circulated on the platform. Designed to maximize user engagement, the algorithm began to favor videos that generated high click-through rates and retention. This shift often rewarded high-energy, sensational content, genres that male creators tended to dominate, such as gaming and tech reviews. Taylor Lorenz, a journalist and expert on the creator economy, highlights that YouTube’s algorithm now “favors the more extreme content,” putting women at a disadvantage as they attempt to keep pace in an environment that may not favor their content styles.

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For many female creators whose content revolves around community and storytelling, the algorithm’s focus on engagement metrics became a significant hurdle. Women-led channels focusing on lifestyle, fashion, and personal stories often faced an uphill battle in gaining visibility, as the algorithm drove attention toward content types that aligned more with male-dominated genres.

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Sponsorships and Brand Deals: A New Avenue with Old Problems

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As YouTube grew into a lucrative platform, monetization opportunities expanded to include brand sponsorships and product placements, further increasing creators’ earning potential. But here, too, male creators gained the lion’s share. 

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One theory to explain the disparity in earnings  could potecan be partly attributed to negotiation differences. Jessy Grossman, founder of Women in Influencer Marketing, talked about the differences in men and women when it comes to negotiating.

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She shared a story that highlighted the confidence gap she observed between men and women in negotiations. While representing a male creator, she described how he would push her to quote higher prices for partnerships, even beyond her usual comfort level—despite her confidence in asking for substantial sums. The major difference, she noted, was that "he just had this confidence that he was willing to always walk away," without the worry of "oh my God, what if they walk away? Or like, what if I lose this deal?"

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This creator’s approach was relaxed and confident, a mindset Jessy found rare in her female clients, who often felt pressure to secure every deal and worried about future opportunities if they didn’t. For Jessy, this experience underscored how much “mindset, mindset, mindset” plays into professional success, particularly in negotiations.

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Each influencer deal is a negotiation, and data shows this often disadvantages women. A 2007 American Psychological Association study found that half of men negotiated salary offers compared to only one-eighth of women. While more women are negotiating today, assertive women still face backlash as "aggressive" or "ambitious," underscoring a wider issue of income inequality.

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In 2022, women earned 82 cents for every dollar men made, up from 80 cents in 2002—a negligible improvement in two decades. Journalist Taylor Lorenz highlighted how this pay disparity plays out in media, noting, “I found out that a colleague of mine was getting paid double… despite the fact that I had some of the most read stories.” She observed that male reporters, especially in tech, often earn more and are taken more seriously, while women covering internet culture are dismissed. "It’s like when they called me a YouTube reporter for years and said YouTube is for cat videos,” Lorenz said.

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This dismissal extends to YouTube itself, where male creators dominate top earnings as the industry evolved. Women initially led blogging and vlogging, but as content creation turned profitable, men began to dominate, pushing women to the periphery. Wired’s 2019 article “Why Women Are Called ‘Influencers’ and Men ‘Creators’” explains this shift, noting that “influencing is seen as easier than producing something” despite men often using similar formats.

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For women, internet culture beats, much like YouTube, are still “fundamentally seen as unserious,” Lorenz shared, with her reporting sometimes labeled as frivolous compared to male-dominated tech coverage. Women, who were once the face of early content creation, now struggle to be taken seriously, even on platforms that owe much of their growth to female creators.

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The Shift to Venture Capital and the “Creator as Brand”

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In recent years, a new revenue stream has emerged for creators: venture capital. Creators with established audiences and entrepreneurial potential are launching businesses around their personal brands, from MrBeast’s chocolate company Feastables to Logan Paul’s Prime energy drink. However, like sponsorships, this funding disproportionately benefits male creators.

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Despite the success of female creators like Emma Chamberlain, who built a massive brand around her YouTube presence, venture capital investment in female-led creator businesses remains rare. Lorenz points out that venture capitalists often overlook female creators, opting to invest in male-led ventures, even when women have proven track records of engagement and profitability. This bias limits female creators’ ability to scale their businesses, perpetuating the perception that men are the “serious” entrepreneurs while women are “just influencers.”

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Moving Forward: Toward a More Equitable Creator Economy

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The gender divide in YouTube monetization is symptomatic of larger societal disparities in pay and representation. Grossman suggests that part of the solution lies in providing female creators with resources to strengthen their negotiation skills and financial literacy, empowering them to compete in a male-dominated industry. Brands and agencies also have a role to play in supporting female creators by offering more equitable sponsorship deals and recognizing the value of diverse perspectives.

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I feel that, as a society, we’re just not that comfortable with women earning serious money—and the influencer marketing industry is no exception. At the start of this article, we talked about Heather Armstrong, one of the original “mommy bloggers.” When Heather began monetizing her blog by running ads, she faced significant backlash. Society, it seems, has always found it easy to criticize a powerful woman making money.

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In many ways, it sometimes feels that we’re still uncomfortable with women having an impactful public platform and presence. When a woman takes up space online, society can be all too ready to tear her down.

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For further insights into the gender gap on YouTube, listen to the full podcast Who Killed the Female YouTube Star?, which investigates gender disparity on the platform.

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