Thank you, Mazarine, for sharing so deeply here! I think the cultural subtext you bring up is an important part of the gender conversation and think that even within our “comfortable first world countries” we have to be aware of the subcultures and the differences in social behavior.

I’m really interested to see what others think here!

Wow, a post about Gender and social media? How can I not respond?
🙂 I majored in literature and gender studies, not social media and gender studies, but since I’ve been blogging since 1999, and using social media at work since 2007, I want to take a stab at answering this.

I have often wondered why so many women do not seem to be able to get as much “popularity” or “backing” as men in the social media field (where’s the female Seth Godin, for instance?) or other fields (such as publishing). Why are so many women not represented on panels?

It seems that some exceptional women are allowed to be that, exceptions, but overall, women’s voices, even if they have incredible things to say, are muffled or ignored. Look at BlogHer, and She’s Geeky. We wouldn’t need these conferences and resources if there weren’t a deep imbalance of women in tech. Look at the epidemic of 100 million missing women around the world (From India to China to Africa) (As NYT columnist Nicolas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn have catalogued in their book, “Half the Sky”, and numerous NYTimes Magazine features.). In their words, women’s issues are seen as a “soft” issue, one that doesn’t have the “urgency” of, say, a massive earthquake in Haiti. Yet the inequity of women kills more women and girls every year than all of those who died in Tianamen Square.

So in short, few women presenting at conferences has nothing to do with women not being able to talk like pompous, self-aggrandizing blowhards. I’ve heard women talk that way. And I’ve also lived overseas in Korea and Indonesia, and seen firsthand what women’s lives are like in Asia. The glass ceiling is more of a steel one. Women are devalued to the point of becoming mere objects. And just because we’re speaking from the comfort of our first world countries doesn’t mean we don’t have this as our cultural subtext as well. We just hide it better. (See Chris Hedges’ “The Empire of Illusion, The Illusion of Love” chapter in particular here.) Or go to Sociological Images.org.

In short, women aren’t represented at conferences because of classism, misogyny, gender oppression, less opportunity, less belief in self, lack of positive and loud female social media role models with the REACH of male ones, and a devaluation of female intellectual inquiry, generally.

If anyone disagrees with me here, I’d love to hear counter-examples.

Thanks so much for joining the conversation, Robert-Jon!

I’m really glad you did. I would never be one to say that as a global community we are moving past gender differences, inequalities, or unbalanced expectations. But, like you’ve said below, if we don’t make the way we do our work or do our communication hinge on gender, we can create a much more compelling environment.

Thanks again.

I think that as long as you’re not making it be about where people want to go or how they want to connect, it’s really not about that either. But making it be about those topics makes for a far more inspiring world than continuing to defend and separate your own gender from the other half of the human population.

RT @amyrsward: Touching on the great convo starter from @VenessaMiemis today (re: @cshirky’s post) – Is it really about gender? http:// …