It is a sustainability and prosperity issue.
I listened to a compelling presentation on digital and media by Joshua J. Omojuwa and Omawumi Ogbe at the international women’s leadership conference. They really made a case for experienced women to share our experience and skills leveraging more on social media to support our generation, create more partnerships and access more opportunities.
Another sell – Your absence from digital media spaces is widening the pay gap.
During the Q and A, I contributed (as an Instagram and twitter avid user on sabbatical leave)
I pointed to the 2023 UN International Women’s Day theme hashtag #digitall and highlighted that online safety, violence and doxing is one key reason professional women do not leverage social media as expected. Women are bullied and afraid of the risk of private details being shared to intimidate them online.
“Bringing women and other marginalized groups into technology results in more creative solutions and has greater potential for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender equality. Their lack of inclusion, by contrast, comes with massive costs: as per UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report, women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the gross domestic product of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade—a loss that will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action. Reversing this trend will require tackling the problem of online violence, which a study of 51 countries revealed 38 per cent of women had personally experienced”
“Online and technology facilitated VAWG takes many forms – sexual harassment, stalking, zoom bombing,13 intimate image abuse, trolling12, doxing,13 misogynistic or gendered hate speech amongst others. For instance, abusive partners or ex-partners use tracking devices or other digital tools to monitor, track, threaten and perpetrate violence.”
How do we tackle this risk as professional women?
Some tips shared were
- Instead of avoiding social media, get educated on how to manage your privacy settings and moderate
- Choose a platform that has moderation capacity and a reporting function – so you can flag and report. Not all platforms work for everyone. Choose the right platform for you and your audience then USE IT. You don’t have to be on all platforms – twitter, Instagram, tiktok, LinkedIn, Snapchat and medium.
- You may outsource your social media page to a PR handler and avoid the nasty comments
- Be clear on your why and the value/topics you wish to use your social media presence to amplify
- Your absence and silence is not serving anyone
- If you will not share your story, others will tell your story and you won’t like it
There are more resources on how we can close the digital gender gap and tackle online violence in the comment section.
