Social media workplace: a level playing field for women?

The advent of social media as the new workplace is one of the revolutionary ways the web has transformed the world of work. However, here the dynamics are completely different - salaries are determined by followers and views.

For instance, to earn an income of $100,000 you need a minimum of 1,000 YouTube subscribers along with 24m annual views, according to the ‘Social Salary’ calculator by lickd.co.

Your boss is you - or maybe even your followers.

So how about the gender dynamics? How do women fare in this new workplace versus the old workplace - the office? It seems like there might still be some gaps.

Learning to manage workplace diversity: it is hard work, but worth it

The old workplace

Combine the high frequency of children getting sick at a day care with a limit on sick leaves, and you get a mother saving all her sick leaves for her children despite being ill. Joan Acker, in her 1990 publication, addressed this issue as resulting from organisations being structured to primarily cater to men: “This worker is actually a man; men’s bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker.”

It is now 2023, and women are still protesting about how the workplace has been built for men.

From the 40-hour work week that assumes that there is someone at home, the male networks helping men advance further or simply masculine personality traits that are lauded in a workplace—there is still have a long way to go.

The new workplace

It turns out women are dominating transactions in social media. According to an IZEA Worldwide survey in 2022, females dominate 83 per cent of all transaction volume. This is despite the fact that more social media users are male. Even though men make 51.8 per cent of Instagram users worldwide as of of January 2023, women made 60 per cent of the top 10 most followed accounts, according to Statista.

In Pakistan, the most followed TikTok account is Pakistani social media personality Jannat Mirza despite the fact only 17.8 per cent of the app’s users being female. If social media content creators are “influencers”, then females clearly have the power of influence in this new workplace.

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There is also a very prominent emotional component in social media which is in stark contrast to the classic show-no-emotion-or-you’re-weak office environment. Social media seems to be a medium through which women are reclaiming their emotions and proving they are not a limitation to being successful. After all, #Love is the most used hashtag on Instagram that has been used more than 1.7 billion times.

In fact, emotions can be utilised as a competitive advantage. In marketing, the strategy of “emotional marketing” has started to come to the fore. Fast Company reports that "in an analysis of the IPA dataBANK, which contains 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns, campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%)”.

You also see an active effort between women to help build each other up — either collaborating for some giveaways, or simple mentions in their social media feed. But one of the most powerful recent examples of women building their networks is how they galvanised an online movement to protest against the murder of Noor Mukadam. There was barely a female Pakistani social media account in sight who did not partake in the uproar.

Finally, the biggest achievement of a social media workplace is its contribution to diversity. Women from diverse backgrounds, with or without traditional power, now have a level playing field here.

Weaknesses

The ever-present issue of gender income disparity continues in this workplace as well. The IZEA Worldwide survey revealed that men earned around 30 per cent more on average per post. It turns out that women are charging less but 1,501% price increase of sponsored post over the 2015-2021 — the ever-present conundrum of women undervaluing themselves exists here as well.

One of the top reasons for women pursuing social media is the flexibility it offers. But instead of it improving the quality of life, it seems like it perpetuates the phenomenon of women wearing multiple hats. Multi-tasking for women seems to be turbo-charged for most women here.

“Pay the bills, feed the kids, take an elderly parent to medical appointments, and so on….”, claims Legal & General Group’s broad study on the U.S. gig economy. This is in contrast with men who are more likely to pursue social media because it was something they wanted to do. The concept of work-life balance or the line between work and life becomes extremely blurred for most.

Pakistan has low participation of female labour force: ADB

Even though women have been penalised for taking maternity leave in the traditional workplace, it can be argued whether one receives any time off on social media at all.

"I've never even really thought that I had anxiety before this job, but I am constantly fearful of falling off, "Christiana Moore tells Refinery29. "It's the only job where you get an instant report card. You post your content and it does well or it doesn't, and you're constantly on a high and low of being validated and not validated based on how your content's being perceived. It's so draining."

Burnout results from the nature of the profession, lack of privacy and constantly being on social media. So the increasing trend of content creators switching off for periods of time offers hope in ameliorating the issue. Social media has definitely leveled the playfield for women, and can be an incredible tool — if used wisely.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners