Women and the Web: Who is Ruling the Cyberspace?

By Silvia Cambié

One of the big myths surrounding social media is that the interactive web is ruled by men.

This is a false perception. Nothing else. Social networking sites are mostly populated by women. According to Information is Beautiful, 57% of the Twitter users are women. This microblogging platform has 7.7 more monthly female visitors than men. Women also outnumber men on Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.

This phenomenon might be a reflection of women’s leadership style which tends to be more inclusive and conducive to consensus building. Social networking is the ideal tool for embracing different views and including people in conversations. Women the world over are using Web 2.0 to promote social change and mobilise audiences around specific cause.

Emerging economies are home to some of the most powerful examples.

Coming together online

Kolena Laila is an event that takes place every year in the Arab blogosphere. Women from all over the region meet online for a week to discuss topics that are usually not openly addressed offline. These include sexual harassment, differences in the upbringing of boys and girls, and women’s role in society. Launched by a group of five Egyptian women in 2006, the campaign grew to include 30 organisers and 300 participants from 13 countries last year, including Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan.

Kolena Laila, which gets its name from the heroine of an Egyptian novel by Latifa Al-Ziat, uses its main site and its participants’ blogs to conduct conversations and pass on its messages. “This initiative has three goals, “ says Kolena Laila’s founder Eman AbdElRahman: keeping the problems of Middle Eastern women in the spotlight, encouraging women to express themselves and promoting an alternative view of Arab women.” AbdElRahman is a firm believer in the power of social media: “Blogging can help you develop your identity. Through online discussions, women can discover themselves and learn from other women.”

The Caucasus is another region where women struggle to make their voices heard. Lara Aharonian from Armenia is an advocate of social media and their role in empowering women. She is a blogger who who runs a support network at the Women’s  Resource Center in Yerevan. “Social media gives women the space denied to them in the physical world,” says Aharonian. “[Web 2.0] can be easily adapted to women’s needs and experiences. Take the example of mothers who feel isolated and overwhelmed by their duties at home. They can network online at their own pace. They can make new contacts, receive information about what is going on in the world and use it for their future career development.”

The perfect blend

The active role that women are playing on the web in establishing communities of interest is teaching corporations and organisations some important lessons.

Jessica Faye Carter, guest writer for Mashable, believes that “Companies looking to reach women — whether as consumers, entrepreneurs, employees, or advocates — have an unprecedented opportunity through social media to engage them.  [They] are searching for the perfect blend of online and offline strategies, and their forays into social media are impacting their interactions with women in important ways.”

A network of dedicated influencers

The European Training Foundation (ETF), an agency of the European Union, had the chance to develop its own combination of online and offline strategies early this year and use them to engage influential women. ETF works with countries in the Middle East, the Western Balkans and the former Soviet Union to develop education and training systems. The improvement of women’s opportunities on the labour market is a key part of its mission.

Every year on March 8th, International Women’s Day, ETF reaches out to international policy makers to draw their attention to the importance of raising public awareness of gender equality in education and employment. This year, ETF wanted to add a grass-roots dimension to its March 8th event. In the run-up to this date, it used Twitter and Facebook to identify and reach out to women bloggers in 21 countries. For two months, ETF conducted an online dialogue on the social networking site NING with 70 women on topics like the need for a more inclusive definition of work and investment in women’s education. This interaction was a way for ETF to gain unique access to women who don’t only write about gender issues on their sites or blogs, but are also actively involved in this kind of work in their communities.

Twenty-two of the women were invited to a face-to-face working session preceding the conference. Their task was to develop a set of recommendations (which were captured on Twitter) in the field of education and employment and present them to policy makers the following day. The women used videos uploaded on YouTube to feedback and tell stories from a wide range of countries, spanning from Croatia to Uzbekistan, to an international audience gathered on March 8th in Turin, Italy, for ETF’s Women and Work conference. This project gave ETF the opportunity to establish a network of dedicated influencers in the field of women’s issues. It also helped the organisation to put social media on the map of international decision makers. 

Lessons for corporate diversity

The commitment that women worldwide are showing to the interactive web is turning social media into a crucial tool for the success of corporate diversity networks. These structures are normally used to promote networking among women inside organisations and to help them with their professional development. Internal communicators use them to reach out to female employees and address their specific challenges.  Internal diversity networks offer women access to initiative like mentoring programs and role-modelling.  To these activities, internal communicators will now have to add the use of social media.

Here are some ideas to keep in mind when asked to use these tools to reach out and engage women in organisations:

•    Encourage open discussions. In the words of Kolena Laila’s AbdElRahman, “always listen to them whether you agree with them or not.”
•    Use conversations on Facebook, Twitter - or your internal versions of these tools - to enhance and extend the impact of significant events (for example annual conferences for female senior executives).
•    You need volunteers within the organisation to feed the online conversations. Make sure you appreciate and recognise their work. Make them feel like an integral part of the community.
•    Tap into your employees’ passions. This classic social media rule holds particularly true when it comes to women’s issues. You will be amazed by the impact an authentic conversation can have on female audiences online and offline.

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About Silvia Cambié

Silvia Cambié is the author of “International Communications Strategy”, nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Awards. She is based in London, where she consults organisations on cross-cultural communication and social media.

Silvia blogs at X-Culture and is read by audience of 11,000 each month. She plays a major role in a number of influential women’s organisations and is Vice President of The International Alliance for Women, a worldwide network of 50,000 business women. Silvia has advised the Chilean government on the role played by international networks in the empowerment of women in emerging economies.