How to Use the Internet to Include All Women on International Women’s Day
Today, on International Women’s Day, the conversation about women and work is more prevalent than ever before. According to research done by Quid Analytics for our upcoming book, “The Internet of Women, Why It Matters,” online articles covering women and work have increased by more than five times globally in just two years, between 2013 and 2015. Their findings document how the discussion of gender is growing around the world.
While many laud the collective goals and positive impact of contemporary efforts towards gender equality, others note a lack of inclusion. Some have accused the current women and work conversation as “plutocrat feminism” — a supposedly democratic movement that in actuality promotes the interests of a privileged few. Others have skeptically called it “trickle-down” feminism — an expression of concern that additional wealth of already privileged women will barely benefit women of lower socio-economic status. The gaps that women in the United States have called out in the feminist movement can help shape how we approach our work towards gender equality globally.
So, my hope today, on International Women’s Day, is that we all — women and men — think about what a global, inclusive movement to gender equality looks like, within and across our national borders. It is my belief that the internet will have a central role in achieving this inclusion.
Existing Gaps in Gender Equality
Debates about gender equality in the United States illustrate how even well-intentioned conversations may not cohesively resonate with all individuals. A report by The Center for Talent Innovation found that black women are 2.8 times as likely as white women to aspire to a powerful position with a prestigious title. Their report concluded that a lack of ambition could not explain the lack of black women in corporate leadership. (Currently, there is only one black female CEO in the S&P 500 Companies). Indeed, as many have pointed out, black women and white women in America face different hurdles. Results of an experimental study by researchers at Kellogg School of Management examining the simultaneous impact of race and gender on leadership outcomes revealed that dominant black female leaders did not create the same backlash that dominant white female leaders did. This suggests that tensions such as the “likeability-competence” trade-off may resonate and be navigated differently by white women and black women in America. And while the study shows that black women may not suffer the same penalties for dominant behavior, this doesn’t mean that they don’t suffer other types of penalty — and perhaps double penalty — for making mistakes on the job, for example.
As this single example illustrates, a woman’s gender is never experienced in isolation. She experiences being a woman simultaneously with her race, socioeconomic status, nationality and profession, among other identities. The concept of “intersectionality,” coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, allows us to address these multiple identities together and reminds us that there is no “one-size-fits-all” feminism. It is of critical importance that today, on International Women’s Day, we use an intersectional approach to ensure that our work is representative of women internationally.
The Range of Women’s Experiences around the Globe
Undeniably, there is much that is similar in women’s experiences around the world, especially when examining gender inequality. On virtually every global measure, women are more economically excluded than men. There is not a country in the world today in which women control more economic wealth and command more institutional authority than men. We are hard-pressed to find a country in the world where the percentage of women CEOs on a country’s stock market or among their largest companies is more than five percent (in many countries, the number is zero).
Just as women are underrepresented in these areas, they are over represented elsewhere, such as unpaid work. In comparing husbands and wives in the United States that are both employed full-time, women typically provide 40 percent more childcare than men. This overrepresentation of women in childcare responsibilities exists across the globe. In Australia and Italy, women do twice as much childcare as men. In Japan — five times, and in India — ten times. The male-female disparity in domestic housework responsibilities is equally large. In the U.S., a woman does 30 percent more housework than her male spouse. In Australia and the Netherlands this percentage jumps to twice as much and is three times greater in Japan.
Concurrently, there is great variation in the specific hurdles and contexts in which women navigate their careers and lives. The United States is the only developed country that does not mandate paid maternity leave, while every country in the Middle East and North Africa, for example, does. The issue of paid maternity leave results in unique challenges and perceptions. In the U.S., many families fall into poverty as the result of unpaid leave after the birth of a child. In the Middle East, where many countries mandate maternity leave benefits, women are often perceived as “more expensive,” making companies more reticent to hire them.
Take another example. In the Netherlands, 76.6% of women work part time. While the Netherlands has been lauded for offering women work–life balance at a national level, there is a paucity of Dutch women in senior leadership roles. Interestingly, removing part-time workers from the analysis, women working full-time achieve management roles nearly as often as men working full time. In China, the communist party historically promoted gender equality and high rates of female employment. Today, China has a smaller wage gap than the United States and according to multiple studies, China is the top country in the world with women in senior management (as of 2013, it was 51%).
Not only do these examples speak to the range of experiences of women globally, but they also highlight that no country is uniform in their achievement or failure of gender equality. Within each country, the experiences of women will vary by race, socio-economic class, and more categories.
An Internet of Women: What Role Does it Play?
The task of achieving gender global equality is extraordinarily complex. Tackling challenging dynamics in our organizations and families — internalized by stereotypes and pervasive in national policies — will require multiple and ongoing changes. The Internet offers opportunities to ensure that the diverse perspectives of women are heard and documented, while also connecting women by what unites them.
· Forums to collect and share information: The internet offers an opportunity to store, post, and share huge amounts of data. I hope we dedicate much of this to women’s experiences. Access to information — and the means to collect it — may be the greatest opportunity of the Internet of Women. Much (though, not all) of what drives gender inequalities today is not explicit discrimination but implicit beliefs that many people are unaware that they hold, such as associating men and not women with leadership. Research indicates that stereotypes are less virulent when women can detect and resist them. The internet offers women a means to inform themselves about stereotypes and their potential effects. The aggregation of important data will also help the world see and understand the richness and diversity of women’s experiences.
· Platforms to coordinate: The internet offers opportunities to coordinate and collaborate for work. Platforms, from Airbnb to Task Rabbit, for example, are at the core of the sharing (or “gig”) economy, in which technology facilitates and monetizes the sharing of particular tasks (“gigs”), services, and goods. This part of the economy is currently estimated at $26 billion and growing every day. It is composed of well-known companies, such as Uber and Etsy, and smaller startups, such as BackOps. While some of these platforms have suffered controversy, I believe they should not yet be ruled out. The informal economy has indeed been one in which women are exploited around the world — working for too little pay or none at all and under unsafe conditions. Thus, skepticism of the contractor systems is warranted. Yet it is also important to consider the potential intersectional approach these platforms might provide. These platforms are malleable — women should use their voice to make Uber a platform that works for them, for example, and these companies will need to hear and act on women’s perspectives. If Uber has adjusted to local markets — creating cash-based transactions in Nigeria and offering tuk-tuk rides in India — why not customize additional features should women ask for them? New companies are also in the works to create opportunities for virtual teams and virtual organizations, which may offer novel access to employment.
· Social networks to connect: Social networks, from Twitter and Facebook to Pinterest and Instagram, are low-cost, low-barrier-to-entry forums for women to tell their stories and catalyze change. An example of this can be seen through the rise in the Iranian Women’s Movement, created in secret and fostered through various online platforms. These platforms have helped garner support from women across social classes, enabled the movement to be as self-sufficient as possible (remaining independent from funding streams and physical locations), and provide a progressive outlet for women that challenges the current political structure.
Of course, the flexibility to either have anonymity or identification is key to creating an internet of women and for women. In Saudi Arabia, as many as 70% of women use Facebook under aliases. The platform was a catalyst in launching the successful ‘lingerie campaign’ in Saudi Arabia which eventually led to women being given the right to work in retail creating thousands of jobs for women nationwide in the Kingdom. In the United States, Facebook has been a platform for women to talk about their recovery from sexual assault. Social media and internet networks have also shown to provide connections that have staying power and grow over time, e.g., professional organizations where women are able to continually receive ongoing advice and mentorship from interactions that may have started out face-to-face but continue online. There are also many sites that connect female entrepreneurs with mentorship, expert advice and solidarity between communities of women doing similar work.
The solution to gender equality is not simple, and the internet will not be a silver bullet or panacea. The internet could be a space in which we repeat and recreate unequal gender structures, or it could be a space in which we create new paradigms that offer a space for empowerment and employment for a range of women’s experiences. I certainly hope we make it the latter.
