Whether you're of the female persuasion or not, recent news events have made it clear that the struggle for gender equality has a new battlefield: The Internet. There are very few corners of the Web where you won't be confronted with sexist images, misogynistic comments or sexual harassment. As sad as it sounds, this type of behavior has actually become what we expect out of Internet culture.
Now, there are people out there trying to change all of that. A website called Women.com launched recently as a hub where women can come together online and discuss anything, from health and fitness to relationships to career.
What makes this different from, say, anywhere else on the Internet, you ask? Well, there's no boys allowed in this girls-only club. Only women can sign up and be active members of Women.com. Right now, the site is invite-only, which helps keep male users out, and if a man is detected on the site, his account will be banned. The company plans on using Facebook Connect to verify the gender of users once it comes out of its beta launch.
Women.com shares some similarities to a website that launched almost two years ago, WomenWeb.com, which allows users to connect all of their social media accounts to one online hub. The aim of WomenWeb.com is also to serve as a resource where women can discuss whatever they want and find like-minded female friends. However, it doesn't seem like WomenWeb.com has really been able to take off just yet.
Women.com co-founder and CEO Susan Johnson told TechCrunch that she first came up with the idea to create a safe space for women online when she was in college but didn't fully realize the idea until more recently as a marketing executive at Facebook. Johnson told TechCrunch that offline or in an email chain with just women, "the conversations would just erupt. We'd talk about a mish-mash of topics. What we're eating, what we're thinking, what we're doing. And I thought, 'Why can't I have these conversations on Facebook?'"
Present yourself as a woman or talk about women's issues on any online platform, and you'll soon see that the response you get isn't always warm and fuzzy or part of intellectual debate. It can be nasty, vulgar and downright unwelcoming for women to be online.
Recognizing this, the humorous online news aggregate Fark updated its posting rules on Aug. 18 to include banning misogyny, making it one of the more notable user-generated sites to create such comment guidelines. Time will tell if Fark's moderation can keep the trolls at bay.
Even sites with original editorial content are taking a stance against online discourse that is potentially harmful for women. Jezebel recently took aim at its parent company Gawker Media for not acting to remove GIFs containing violent pornography from the comments section of stories on the website. Not only did this help bring awareness to why this sort of behavior does nothing to foster conversation, it also finally got Gawker's attention. A day after Jezebel posted the letter, Gawker Media's Editorial Director Joel Johnson tweeted that the company would disable image uploads from the discussion sections of stories until it figures out a better solution to moderate images.
Making the web a better place for the ladies is not only the right thing to do; it's just good business. Data from Pew, Burst Media and Nielsen suggests that women use social media more often than men on many different platforms. Think of how much more money companies could earn from advertisers if women wanted to spend even more time on social media instead of logging off because some jerk made a comment about her appearance.
Female empowerment has also gone mobile. A whole slew of dating apps targeted toward women have launched in the past year, such as Lulu, which allows women to anonymously review men, Wyldfire, where women hold the power to invite men, and Siren, which encourages women to make the first move in dating.
So far, all of these efforts to improve the online experience for women seem like a step in the right direction. Although in the app department, it would be great if we could get some more female-targeted apps that weren't focused on finding a man. Giving women a space where they feel more welcome could boost their confidence and allow them to open up more about issues that really matter to them and to other women, not just what they think they're supposed to be talking about. We definitely still have a long way to go, but let's hope there does come a day when we can all enjoy the seemingly limitless possibilities of the Internet equally.
