Women and Social Media

Today ‘s era is the era of social media whose presence and active involvement has swiftly and widely spread the ideologies for women empowerment. Social media  has become the agent of  social change which helped and supported women‘s empowerment in various aspects such as mobilizing attention of glocal community towards women‘s rights and challenges discrimination and stereotypes across the globe. Social  media  has given  platform  to  discuss  issues  and challenges  of  women  through  blogs,  chats,  online  campaign, online  discussion  forums,  and  online  communities which  is  mostly  not  disseminated  or  propagated  by  mainstream  media.

Significance of social media in the lives of women
  • Social media is easily accessible and it’s also the meeting point of today’s internet savvy audience.
  • Women’s rights
    • A concrete relationship definitely exists between social media and women’s rights
    • Social media has opened doors  and made  everything available  for  everybody everywhere,  thus  eliminating gates and gatekeeping of  any sort.
    • Intrinsically, women’s rights  violations  and women’s rights movements  have  been  quickly  capitalized  on  social  media’s  unparalleled  awareness-raising potential.
    • social media has become a tool for women to campaign against issues like gender stereotyping, gender suppression etc.
  • Curbing violence against women
    • Internet and social media can enable activists and others to challenge myths and stereotypes as well as create new forums for the perpetuation of violence against women.
    • Hashtag movements  to  end  violence  and discrimination   against
    • Social media   is   a   strong platform   to   discuss   and   share   views,   experiences   to channelize  hashtag  movements  to  stop  sexual  violence  and discrimination  against
    • It is  a  new  frontier  to  organise campaign or rally by women‘s rights activists to come forward and  fight  for  gender
    • Through  social  media,  women across  the  globe  are  connected  and  supporting  each  other such  as  lawmakers,  politicians,  business  owners  for  gender equality.
    • Twitter’s hashtag function in particular allows women to easily follow issues that matter to them and forge coalitions based upon shared concerns, from immediate personal needs to calls for large-scale social change. E.g: #MeToo movement, #SelfieWithDaughter etc.
  • Women Entrepreneurs
    • Social media  is  becoming  one  of  the  most  powerful  tools where women can start new companies, venture or start-up as they can contact and converse with customers and consumers directly.
    • Female entrepreneurs   can   do   marketing   through social  media  which  is  very  cost  effective  and  can  be  easily channelized.
    • Social media with the help of new technology pave the ground for millions of people to find online jobs for themselves or create businesses for others globally.
    • For instance, Shradha Sharma is   the   Founder   and   Chief   Editor   at Yourstory.com,   which   is   an   online media  platform  for  start-ups  and    It  is  India‘s leading  online  media  technology  which  has  narrated  more than  20,000  stories  in  12  Indian  languages  of  entrepreneurs which  reaches  to  more  than  10  million  readers  very  month.
  • Making the voices heard
    • In digital platforms, the cost of participating for a cause or in a protest is cheaper. This encourages more people to participate and force governments to pay heed.
    • While women still remain underrepresented, social media provides a level playing field by allowing individual voices from a wider range of backgrounds to be heard, with or without the traditional power.
    • It fills up the lacunae presented by the traditional media, where women receive only 38% of bylines.
  • Global Communities
    • Female-based communities are evolving in a way that cuts through particular companies and physical limitations and connects female players throughout industries and geographies.
    • Because the internet bypasses so many barriers that separate us, women who were formerly isolated can now access high-profile players in their field and, conversely, build an accessible, highly visible platform for self-promotion.
    • Women have historically had a more difficult time capitalizing concepts and proposals, but the interplay of social media and crowdfunding is turning that paradigm on its head.
    • For instance, In July of 2020, women took to instagram to post black-and-white pictures of themselves with the caption “#challengeaccepted”. Women who participated in the challenge would nominate another woman and tag them in the post of their selfie, challenging them to post a black-and-white picture of themselves and nominate someone else.
  • Breaking barriers
    • Social media breaks cultural barriers, legal restrictions, economic barriers and more, enabling the better representation of women from across the globe, even from countries following misogynistic systems.
    • It has played a critical role during the pandemic in enabling the continuation of activism even amid the lockdown and social distancing.
Challenges faced by women on social media

  • Women are the most vulnerable to cyber abuse like online harassment.
  • Increased attention of women in social media often makes them the target of repressive activities. This results in gendered barriers for women online as in public places.
  • Online offences are often normalised due to the difficulty in tracing offenders and the complexity and inaccessibility of the justice delivery mechanisms
  • This creates mistrust of the public towards the justice system, leading to the further marginalisation of women.
  • In this backdrop, social media has become a tool for the rapists to threaten their victims to not report the crime.
  • Such platforms are used by harassers to silence women who strive to break the misogynistic social norms.
  • A study revealed that a third of the surveyed women stopped opinionating online due to the fear of abusers.
  • Online trolling is now going beyond the digital realm, leading to cases like suicides.
  • An international survey found that 20% of women being harassed offline believe that those attacks were connected to online abuse they receive.
  • Some are even vulnerable to stalkers because of their online presence. This is especially prevalent in regions where law enforcement is weak, patriarchy is strong and online trolling is commonplace.
  • Fake profiles are often created for sullying victims’ reputation.
  • In recent years, the internet has become a tool to discriminate against women, with a high prevalence of hate campaigns across the world. E.g. Revenge porn.
  • With the worldwide restrictions due to the pandemic pushing more people online, cases of online gender abuse have escalated.
Measures needed in Women and Social Media
  • Government level:
    • National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal shall be designated as the national portal under-reporting requirements in the POCSO Act in case of electronic material
    • Union Government shall be empowered through its designated authority to block and/or prohibit all websites/intermediaries that carry child sexual abuse material
    • Law enforcement agencies should be permitted to brake end to end encryption to trace distributors of child pornography.
    • A cyber crime portal was launched in 2018 to enable citizens to report obscene contents.
    • Cyber police stations and cyber crime cells were set up in each state for reporting and investigating cybercrime cases.
  • Use of Artificial intelligence:
    • Tools can be developed which can analyse the behaviour of every internet user. So it can help prevent the user from falling into cyber bullying.
    • Developing some mobile applications that can alert parents if the child is under threat of cyber bullying.
    • Prevent malware attacks by tying up with antivirus agencies.
  • Multipronged approach to handle cases:
    • Need to handle the cases of cyber bullying through multipronged approach such as counselling through Psychiatrist, approaching police, etc.
Way forward
  • Social media platforms have moral obligations to safeguard their users.
  • They must strive towards ensuring transparent and efficient reporting systems so that people can use them to curb cyberbullying.
  • Making social media platforms accountable
  • Countermeasures against online trolling must be encompassed within the women empowerment policies
  • Online women-specific crime reporting unit must be set up for quicker disposal for complaints regarding targeted harassment of women users of social media.
  • Increasing political representation of women for removing societal inequality, discrimination and misogyny
  • The cybercrimes in social media platforms are mainly addressed under the IPC provisions that deal with conventional offences like sexual harassment, privacy violation etc.
  • They are largely inefficient in dealing with techno-motivated crimes, which have more impact on victims than those traditional offences due to the lack of justice.
  • Therefore, the cyber crimes under the IT Act must be repealed and IPC must be modified to cover all cybercrimes, including those currently covered under the IT Act.

As part of a knowledge society in the new media era, social media considerably contribute to women empowerment by offering information and education that presents women users with strategies offering better informed  decision making from anywhere and  everywhere which may not be possible otherwise.