“Online Social Networks and Global Women’s Empowerment” assesses the relationship between social media platforms, specifically FaceBook, as it pertains to women’s empowerment, or lack thereof. This short but informative article discusses the relationship and hardships that Zambian women have faced on these platforms, in FaceBook groups and more. Furthermore, this article vouches and supports the idea that social media should adopt user awareness in the realm of gender.
Buskens uses FaceBook as the “villain” here, using the Zambian women groups online as an example of the ways in which this platform specifically is not adaptive to gender awareness. These women formed these groups in order to freely discuss conversations about sex that they felt were significant. During this time period, women in Zambia were “attacked and stripped naked in the streets by mobs of male assailants who were citing Christian and cultural principles whilst claiming that the women were wearing sexually provocative clothing” (Buskens). As a result, FaceBook disbanded these pages and groups, implying that the platform sided with the male hegemonic social order and further supported the concept that women shouldn’t have sexual agency. This is only one case in which gender-based violence has been normalized and women have been victimized for speaking freely about sex and other things.
Buskens suggests that these platforms should be instead supporting the empowerment of women, not the patriarchal social order, and I agree. This event occurred around 10 years ago, and though these platforms have become more open to gender awareness since, I find it disturbing that people are unable to discuss certain topics simply because of their gender, and that these platforms are unsupportive of equality in this sense.
Leah, your blog post was really interesting and I appreciated reading it. I agree with you that it is disturbing to think about how people are unable to use their voices simply because of their gender. This is extremely oppressive and shows how there are some societal norms/expectations that do not support gender equality. While we have been consistently moving in the right direction for gender equality, I think there is still an immense amount of work that needs to be done to advocate for women to occupy the same spaces and places that men have for centuries. Furthermore, it is extremely important for technology innovators and producers to be aware of gender equality and issues when creating products because there can be long-term implications if something oppressive and regressive is created.