10 Ways That Social Media Has Empowered Women - And May Save The World, Too
1. Most employers consider it a requirement to know how to use social media—which is basically about chattering all the time about what you’re doing with your friends.
2. People with young children can still participate in the workplace thanks to wireless Internet connectivity and social media collaboration tools that make it possible to get an accredited degree, telecommute, work before the kids go to school and late into the night.
3. Now that this technology is widely available it is becoming “normal” for everyone to balance their work and their personal lives, not just mothers, which means that the work associated with parenting and care of the home is being distributed more equally between women and men.
4. The Internet lets you comparison shop easily and social media means that no vendor is safe from criticism. Thus consumers make decisions based on a variety of factors related to trust and relationships. This is a different kind of business model that gives women, who are traditionally the “communication and relationship experts,” an advantage. (I expect that the genders will increasingly level out in terms of their relationship skills as money is increasingly made in this way.)
5. Social media is a world where physical strength is irrelevant, an advantage for most women.
6. Social media is a world where people can’t be controlled (much) by traditional chains of command. Everybody’s ideas are equal and everybody has a chance to participate in the conversation.
7. Social media-reared kids expect supervisors to interact with them frequently and to mentor them so that they are not just working but growing in terms of their earning capacity. Meaning, they expect to be parented at work—a traditionally female occupation.
8. In the world of social media, you can be slaughtered by gossip. Men, who traditionally are expected to handle physical threats rather than verbal ones, are at a disadvantage compared with women, who are more attuned to aggression that is not physical in nature.
9. We are increasingly incorporating social media collaboration tools into the workplace to facilitate collaboration, because today’s complex knowledge economy requires every employee to be fully engaged intellectually. Traditionally, women as mothers have facilitated family interactions, and this translates neatly into roles that involve online community management.
10. To meet the demands of today’s environment, organizations must function in an integrated way as well as employee employees who are coming to work on all cylinders—physically and emotionally. Everything must be holistic; every part of the machine must work together. Thus everybody must collaborate to improve products and services for the customer. We also must focus on employee engagement and health because without intellectual and emotional capital, our organizations can’t thrive.
Looking at all of this, I wonder what the future will hold, as women and men adapt to this changed world. I foresee that we will adapt to the technology by becoming more balanced people who are better able to relate to one another and to contribute to not only our organizations, but also our world…solving the most difficult and painful problems that humanity faces.
Perhaps the feminist revolution will also bring the end of poverty, illness, warfare, and all the other ills that can be fixed if we just put our heads together and try.
2. People with young children can still participate in the workplace thanks to wireless Internet connectivity and social media collaboration tools that make it possible to get an accredited degree, telecommute, work before the kids go to school and late into the night.
3. Now that this technology is widely available it is becoming “normal” for everyone to balance their work and their personal lives, not just mothers, which means that the work associated with parenting and care of the home is being distributed more equally between women and men.
4. The Internet lets you comparison shop easily and social media means that no vendor is safe from criticism. Thus consumers make decisions based on a variety of factors related to trust and relationships. This is a different kind of business model that gives women, who are traditionally the “communication and relationship experts,” an advantage. (I expect that the genders will increasingly level out in terms of their relationship skills as money is increasingly made in this way.)
5. Social media is a world where physical strength is irrelevant, an advantage for most women.
6. Social media is a world where people can’t be controlled (much) by traditional chains of command. Everybody’s ideas are equal and everybody has a chance to participate in the conversation.
7. Social media-reared kids expect supervisors to interact with them frequently and to mentor them so that they are not just working but growing in terms of their earning capacity. Meaning, they expect to be parented at work—a traditionally female occupation.
8. In the world of social media, you can be slaughtered by gossip. Men, who traditionally are expected to handle physical threats rather than verbal ones, are at a disadvantage compared with women, who are more attuned to aggression that is not physical in nature.
9. We are increasingly incorporating social media collaboration tools into the workplace to facilitate collaboration, because today’s complex knowledge economy requires every employee to be fully engaged intellectually. Traditionally, women as mothers have facilitated family interactions, and this translates neatly into roles that involve online community management.
10. To meet the demands of today’s environment, organizations must function in an integrated way as well as employee employees who are coming to work on all cylinders—physically and emotionally. Everything must be holistic; every part of the machine must work together. Thus everybody must collaborate to improve products and services for the customer. We also must focus on employee engagement and health because without intellectual and emotional capital, our organizations can’t thrive.
Looking at all of this, I wonder what the future will hold, as women and men adapt to this changed world. I foresee that we will adapt to the technology by becoming more balanced people who are better able to relate to one another and to contribute to not only our organizations, but also our world…solving the most difficult and painful problems that humanity faces.
Perhaps the feminist revolution will also bring the end of poverty, illness, warfare, and all the other ills that can be fixed if we just put our heads together and try.
Comment
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Comment by Bryan Conway JD, PMP on July 22, 2010 at 9:07am -
@ Dannielle – very interesting points!
On the flip side, women could potentially be more negatively affected than men by being relegated to an avatar on a social networking site! Like it or not (or rather, whether we choose to admit it or not!), our physical appearance and mannerisms can be just as influential as our words.
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Comment by Dannielle Blumenthal on July 22, 2010 at 6:28am -
That's a good point. Community has historically been empowering to women.
But to answer your question, I think G-d is the cause of female empowerment, and has allowed social media technology to be discovered and to proliferate as a blessing to us.
Re 40 years ago, it was a little less than 20 that I hadn't heard of the Internet and was carrying my baby daughter around the library at CUNY Graduate Center in New York in a Snugli, stacking sociology books in her stroller, and loading them on the subway to get home and write my Ph.D. dissertation. There was no social media and everything had to be done the "shlepping" way.
The only way I could go to class was if I went to school with all my classes on one day and my mother in law watched my daughter from sunrise to sunset. And my father in law drove me to the city for Spanish class. There was no such thing as online learning.
I could go on, but everything I'm saying, I have personally lived and thank G-d many times over for.
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Comment by Ari Herzog, MPA on July 21, 2010 at 11:46pm -
Hold on a second. Not to be the minority responder, but is social media the cause of female empowerment -- or is community?
All of the above points could have been made 40 years ago, no?
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Comment by GovLoop on July 18, 2010 at 4:37pm -
I think #2 is key. People opted out of the workforce (to raise a child, are laid-off, take care of family member) have a way to stay connected and show market knowledge.
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Comment by Dannielle Blumenthal on July 18, 2010 at 4:29pm
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Geez Harlan - you were joking! Thank Gd.
I get your point. Enjoy the day and thanks for the lively discussion!
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Comment by Amy Phillips on July 18, 2010 at 3:26pm -
Great Post, I especially love number 8. Men seemed to be mystified on why it matters who says what, and, in part, I agree with them. But the fact is it does, especially in the blog world where you have to be extra careful not make someone mad.
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Comment by Dannielle Blumenthal on July 18, 2010 at 3:21pm
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The words "those feminists" and "our brothers" say it all.
Last time I checked the feminist movement was about eliminating chauvinism, which you claim to oppose.
I owe my career to the feminist movement and to the women and men who helped me as well.
Institutional sexism is when societ is set up to privilege men or women. Example #1 is when a child is born, the need to provide care is assumed to be a womans responsibility, and childcare is absent from most workplaces.
I respect your right to disagree, but let's stay in reality shall we?
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Comment by Dannielle Blumenthal on July 18, 2010 at 2:06pm
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By the way...I am against sexism of any kind no matter what it is called. And thank you for the comment Harlan.
Also you have a point on number 1. It applies more to private sector and is more assumed than required. Well taken.
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Comment by Dannielle Blumenthal on July 18, 2010 at 1:55pm
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pointing out how women are overcoming institutional sexism is sexist? Hmm. Anyway - no sexism was intended or implied. To describe what you see is not chauvinistic (doesn't that mean biased against WOMEN?)
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