Women use social media to bridge gender gap

New figures from Harvard Business Publishing have shed a little light on cyber gender. Though traditional “wisdom” claims that boys have a natural aptitude for technology and girls cry when they have to change a lightbulb, the survey demonstrates that this could all be changing.

The survey, which focuses on Twitter, says that men and women follow a similar number of people on the social networking site, and that men and women tweet at the same rate. Though there are slight differences in patterns of following – men tend to have around 15% more followers than women – these are negligible when considering how much the fairer sex are using the technology.

Social media is starting to show us that, actually, women are just as likely to adopt and maximise on new technologies as men, if not more likely. Though in the IT industry, women are seriously underrepresented in high technology companies (particularly in the boardroom), women in general are using new technologies for social or business purposes with just as much panache as their male counterparts.

Further the gaming industry is being hit by an onslaught of female gamers, noted as early as 2005. And even this month women rushed to the stores to collect the latest craze in Sims3 - apparently!

It would be foolhardy to go so far as to say that social media and other technologies have smashed the glass ceiling, as women are still unequal in terms of pay, career opportunities and their presence in education and training in technological subjects. The ability to use social media and web technologies, however, has very little gender bias. In fact, though just as many men and women use social media in general, women tend to use it far more, according to a Rapleaf survey published last year. So we could see women maximising on opportunities in new markets through this. Rapleaf predicts that the next wave of businesses using social media as a marketing tool will target women, as they are the biggest users, which will need female direction to be successful.

Women working and networking at the forefront of social media technology is a phenomenon that is already around us. Take, for example, lesbian networking site Gingerbeer. The site, which contains events listings, message boards and so on, is already celebrating 10 successful years, with a million new page impressions per month. It just goes to show that behind a screen, there is hardly any difference between the sexes at all.