Now .....
What if World is ruled by Women? Not just as occasional leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Pratibha Patil, or Australia’s Julia Gillard, but as leaders of all the G20 nations, major banks, media empires, and the militaries of the world? And what if women had invented and been instrumental in the Internet and then smart phones and social media? The world might have been cleaner, safer, more peaceful, and caring. Maybe even more human, dare we imagine.
So assuming that this world existed, what would the relationship be between those in power, (women) and the wider public (presumably mostly men)?
Women might not rule this world in the traditional sense, but on first glance, they might have achieved a new type of equality or power through digital means. They are in the majority when it comes to population, so perhaps it’s no surprise that now women are prime users of social media.
A survey published in September in the US found that women and 18-34-year-olds are the most active social networkers. Nine of the top 10 social networks and blogs “skew female”, according to the Nielsen report. Teenage girls were also more represented on Tumblr. Those women and girls carve out their own spaces and identities thanks to social media, but it’s still in a world created by men. iPads and Twitter aren’t “toys for boys” – but they were still invented by them.
The Internet is sometimes described as a democratising force as it allows anyone a voice. This is partially true, but the internet was still invented by men, as was Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Tumblr, Spotify, Digg, and LinkedIn. Of the big social media creations, only Bebo credits a woman as a founder, in the form of husband-and-wife duo Michael and Xochi Birch.
Only about 12 per cent of computing graduates are women. Social media may be heavily used by women so that could someday translate to the development stage.
But Dawn Carmichael, at the University of Abertay in Dundee, concludes: “That seems unlikely without industry and educators addressing issues that appear to have made computing unattractive as a career option to young women.”
So the systems are male, the messages from media organisations are frequently male, but the users are female. Who has the power in that dynamic?
Websites such as Mumsnet in the UK have powerful voices, mostly recently exerted against advertisers in the News of the World after the phone hacking scandal erupted in July. Women, in numbers, could be said to have flexed their collective “muscle”. For mainstream news organisations, political parties or even general businesses, the question then becomes if a large number of your Twitter or Tumblr followers are women, are you speaking to those women about all issues, or what you perceive to be women’s issues?
If the majority of people using social media are women, should the make up of a news organisation match that? Should the duties of posting to Twitter or Facebook be split between genders? Should it even be mandated, just as Rwanda requires at least 30 per cent of its politicians to be women?
Consider the newsrooms of Scotland. Most online content is dictated or posted by men. There are also no female national newspaper reporters covering politics, nor female editors or news editors on those papers.
If the majority of people using social media are women, should the make up of a news organisation match that? Should the duties of posting to Twitter or Facebook be split between genders? Should it even be mandated, just as Rwanda requires at least 30 per cent of its politicians to be women?
Consider the newsrooms of Scotland. Most online content is dictated or posted by men. There are also no female national newspaper reporters covering politics, nor female editors or news editors on those papers.
One former reporter, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that: “There is definitely sexism in Scottish journalism, certainly in newspapers. Not always, but in my decade in papers there was a tendency to push women into the health, education and features rather than crime and politics.
“Middle-aged men in grey suits at the top of the sector are almost relics from a previous age that still can’t shake the deeply help belief that women are better in caring roles so would be better speaking to bereaved families and distressed parents, while men are far better at taking the aggressive stance needed to deal with politics and police officers for example. “I think new media is perhaps the exception, although it is still dominated by male bosses like the rest of the sector.”
But why stop at gender? Scotland’s national print reporters and newsdesks are entirely white. Should there be statistically mandated diversity? And similarly, if people are tweeting in languages other than English, is a news organisation or any business or body accurately reflecting all views, or only the ones their unilingual employees can read?
The same Nielsen report mentioned earlier found that African Americans were more represented on Twitter than any of the other nine social networks. But would you suggest African American reporters stick to Twitter? No, that’s absurd.
Niche sites are becoming more popular as everyone carves out individual corners to put across their views, rather than shared spaces to debate or mediate on subjects. News businesses – just like Facebook and Google, particularly on advertising – are increasingly trying to tailor news or websites to each user. But that may risk removing any possibility of shared experiences or understandings.
We don’t live in an equal world. In fact, we’re still a long way off. Does using the same social media tools make us equal?
It doesn’t ensure women earn the same as men in boardrooms or newsrooms or factories. It doesn’t ensure female voices are represented in government. And it sadly doesn’t prevent violence against women.
Are our judgements about a photo of a drunk woman on a Facebook profile the same as for a man? Of course not. Unless you were to remove all photos, all names, all identity and reduce us to numbers, then we are still judgers and the judged. Only the computer itself reduces us to 1s and 0s.
The problem with having instant access to any voice in the world through social media is that in most cases, you don’t know who’s speaking, and so you can’t have understanding. But that anonymity still doesn’t guarante equality – unless you consider casting insults as a mark of equal rights and opportunities.
These are not flippant questions. Every news operation and online business is obsessed with its audience. The language we use to interact with those audiences, the systems we develop to enable that interaction and the inhere
nt biases on both sides of the equation are important considerations. How you use the technology made available to you is a personal matter and nobody’s business but your own.
However, to build a better relationship and develop the community within social media, and between the public and news organisations or other businesses, we need to consider if we are representing and reflecting the public properly. The opportunities to report or achieve in life, just like tweeting, must be as equal and free as our choices of how to spend our time online.
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