Social Media and Its Impact on Women’s Education

Introduction

For a long time, different cultures sidelined women in regard to exposure and education. Most cultures valued men while placing women at the periphery. The lack of access to information to women created an imbalanced society; most fields being dominated by men while women being in charge of household chores (Bardall, 2017). It is the reason why the society today is still unbalanced, something that is making women agitate for changes. Additionally, the available media in the past did not promote an equal chance for women to voice their concerns or even promote their empowerment. The notable media that were available during the time included television and radios. But the employment inequalities in the various media meant that it would be difficult for the welfare of the women to be promoted. But the media could also not be accessed at the convenience of individuals. The information being conveyed by the channels was also limited. Most of the adverts aired out intended to market various companies’ products than they intended to promote social change, and in particular, addressing women education and empowerment. This working paper intends to define the meaning of social influence, social media, and how the social media has impacted women in regard to education.

Social Influence

Rashotte (2007) defines social influence as transformation of people’s thoughts, attitudes, feelings, or behavior which arise from interaction with another person or group. Lisa also points out that social influence is different from conformity. As Lisa states, conformity happens when a person articulates a particular opinion or trait so that he or she can be part of a certain situation, or meet the expectations of a particular group. Nevertheless, in conformity, the individual does not necessarily believe in the values or opinions of the group. Social influence on the contrary, is the process through which people make actual changes to their behaviors and feelings because of interacting with others who are thought to be desirable, similar or expert (Miller et al., 2016). People change their attitudes or beliefs in line with individuals whom they perceive to be similar with regard to psychological principles such as balance. People are also swayed by the majority meaning that when a large group of a person’s referent social group has a particular attitude, there is a high probability that an individual may adopt it as well. Also, people may be compelled to change their opinions when people whom they consider to be superior or opinion leaders hold different opinions.

Experts posit that social influence does not only arise from individuals or groups, but also results from the roles and norms held by certain individuals. It is important to understand this aspect to be able to understand its relationship with the influence of social media. Understanding all the aspects of social influence is key to defining the impact of social media to women education conclusively. Researchers such as Liddicoat (2017) view social influence as the result derived from the application of social power from one of the five elements which include coercive power, reward power, expert power, legitimate power, and referent power. The same researchers also consider a transformation in reported opinion (conformity) a case of social influence whether it represents a true private change or not.

Bandura and Zimbardo Social Influence Theories

To understand the power of social influence clearly, the article will discuss two social experiments conducted by eminent scholars; Bandura and Zimbardo. To begin with Bandura, he agreed with the classical and the operant conditioning, constituents of the behaviorist learning theories. Nevertheless, he added to fundamental ideas to the theories; (1) the mediating processes happen between stimuli and responses, (2) learning of behavior is influenced by the environment through observational learning process. Talking about observational learning, Bandura asserts that children observe adults around them behaving in several ways. The people that children observe are known as models (Kolodziej, 2015)). As such, in the society, children are surrounded by numerous influential models such as friends, parents, characters on television, as well as teachers. It is from such groups that children imitate certain traits, whether feminine or masculine, pro and antisocial. Children will always pay attention to some of those models and as a result develop certain traits. Nonetheless, it is likely that children will copy behavior from people of their gender. When a little girl observes her older sister portraying a certain trait that ultimately results to her being rewarded, it is highly likely that the little girl will strive to portray the same trait when growing up. The child may not only want to copy traits exhibited by adults around him or her but may want to identify with the older person. Whereas imitation only involves adoption of a single behavior, identification involves adopting almost all the traits exhibited by the child’s role model.

Bandura, nevertheless, contends that individuals do not just observe a certain behavior and automatically imitate it. On the contrary, people usually engage in a thought process before imitating or identifying with the behavior. This thought process is what Bandura refers to as mediation, which occurs between the time of observation and choosing to imitate it or not. Consequently, Bandura proposes four mediational processes which include, attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Attention is the stage where people notice the behavior. Retention refers to how well people can recall the behavior. Individuals can notice a behavior but fail to remember it, which ultimately prevents imitation or identification. During the reproduction phase, an individual attempts to perform the trait which the model demonstrates. Lastly, motivation involves how an individual is willing to perform the imitated behavior. The willingness depends on the consequences associated with the performance of the behavior.

The Zimbardo experiment was conducted in the Stanford University basement where a mock prison was created. Some subjects assumed the role of prisoners while others assumed the role of guards. While the experiment was meant to be conducted for a period of two weeks, Zimbardo was forced to terminate it before the proposed duration following the distress suffered by the ‘prisoners’. The ‘guards’ aware of the power they held, mistreated the ‘prisoners’ forgetting that it was only a mock experiment (Stolarski, Fieulaine & van Beek, 2015). The experiment demonstrated the extent to which people can go when given certain roles. Although the experiment has variously been criticized, it demonstrates that human beings respond to various social changes in certain ways. The ‘prisoners’ in the experiment assumed the role of actual prisoners and even thought that they were under real confinement. To make the experiment look real, the ‘prisoners’ were arrested by real police officers. Even more remarkable was that the ‘prisoners’ did not find it necessary to rebel the outright abuse of their fundamental rights. The guards, on the other hand, were oblivious of the plight of the prisoners. In fact, many of them exacerbated the situation to demonstrate their authority. 

From the Bandura and Zimbardo experiments, human beings do not operate in a vacuum, but exist in a social environment that has an impact on their wellbeing. The environment often influences an individual in regard to achievement of their goals, freedom of expression, and so on. But the same society places some individuals at the periphery while placing others at the helm. Such has been the relationship between men and women. Like in the Zimbardo experiment, women have for a long time been treated as ‘prisoners’ while men have always assumed the role of ‘guards’. The existence of such categories means that inequality has been real and even mistreatment. But men have been oblivious, while men women for a long time have conformed to the authority of men, fearing of the consequences should they raise any objection. As a result, men chose what to give women and what not to. The disadvantage of this social conformity is that women did not achieve their potential because only a few of them were educated (Rashotte, 2007). Even the few educated women were given roles that men considered inferior and did not have high wages.

Social Media

The emergence of the internet and consequently social media, has resulted into both negative and positive impact in regard to women education. Kosut (2012) defines social media as channels through which people connect with their family, friends, and acquaintances. Although people usually make new friends through the social media sites, the objective of the sites is to connect with the family, friends and acquaintances that an individual already has. The most prominent social media sites currently are; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. All these websites allow individuals to share their videos, photos, information, chat, organize events, and even play online games (Kassenbrock, 2014). It is also necessary to understand the characteristics of social media which include; participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness. On participation, social media allows contributions and feedback from everybody who is interested. Concerning openness, most social media sites do not bar anyone from sharing content they like. As a result of rules and guidelines that control the conventional media, some comments and information are censored. Comments or information that portray evident political inclination or ideology may not be allowed to air. Although social media also bars information that could cause consternation of chaos, there is relative freedom compared to conventional media.

To say that social media sites have brought about equality is an understatement. Social media has revolutionized the world in so many ways. First, is that it has led to faster, efficient, and less costly communication. That applies to every individual and organization. In the recent past, individuals and organizations had to incur sometimes exorbitant costs to place advertisement. Nowadays, people can open Facebook pages or post photographs on Instagram while incurring low internet charges. The benefit of social media is that it has many users, making information to reach a large audience. For people engaged in business, the large audience translates into a large market for their products. The other advantage of social media is that it facilitates communication and dissemination of information at an individual’s convenience. As opposed to mainstream media which requires that an individual be seated at a specific place or wait till a certain time before he or she accesses information, social media sites can be accessed through mobile phones, which are portable.

Nevertheless, the emergence of social media has also resulted into negative impacts. Raisinghani (2013) asserts that face-to-face conversation has been affected. That means that people are glued to their devices and have forgotten about the importance of conversing with each other. Children as young as ten currently have mobile phones, where they have access to various social media sites. As such, parents or guardians find it difficult to talk to their children who do not pay attention to them. The trend also affects people at various places of work. Social media sometimes makes people to neglect their duties and engage in activities that are not related to their tasks. This habit has had undesirable consequences to some employees, whereby some employers have found it necessary to subject workers to punitive measures for absconding work. Additionally, the partial censoring of content on social media has contributed to generation of morals among some individuals, especially young people. Facebook and Instagram do not have strict controls of banning persons who are underage to use the sites. As a result, the young people may get access to content that is meant for adults. Parents and guardians cannot control what their children watch. In fact, a majority of parents are not on social media sites, hence cannot understand the content that is usually available.

Impact on Women

But how have women been impacted by the social media sites? The most significant aspect is that social media does not discriminate anyone on the basis of their gender. That means that both men and women have equal access to information (Cummings & O’Neil, 2015). While men were the most enlightened individuals in the past, social media has closed the gap in regard to access to information. The term education is dynamic. Therefore, in reference to women education as a result of social media, many things are implied. First, education implies enlightenment. People begin to understand things happening around them. Also, through education, people become aware of their rights and freedom. Lastly, education entails self-development and growth. The latter aspect refers to acquisition of knowledge to attain individual goals and aspirations. Literally, it means going to school and pursuing a subject of interest. To be able to tell whether social media has had a positive impact on the education of women, this working paper analyzes women that have been vulnerable, especially those in the developing countries.

Women in Africa, unlike their counterparts in the developed continents have been facing a lot of prejudices. Disparities in terms of education and empowerment are evident. Many people may argue that the significant differences are as a result of weak institutions in Africa that do not support the needs of women. While such an assertion may be true, technology also plays a considerable role. Technology is more advanced in the developed nations than it is in Africa. Moreover, technological inventions started in the developed countries before it spread to Africa. Even in Africa itself, there are considerable variations in how people are connected to the internet, as well as, have access to latest communication devices. Some countries bar their citizens from accessing social media sites while others provide more freedom. To provide a general comparison, a woman above fifty years in Europe is likely to be more informed than a woman of the same age in Africa or some Asian countries (Padovani, 2016). While some critics may still argue that developed countries have better systems, it is also true that developing countries have little access to information. Most women in Africa who are forty years and above do not know how to use many social media sites or do not know what to post even if they had accounts opened for them. Such type of ignorance means that they cannot get access to crucial information like their colleagues in developed countries.

In comparison to young women who are thirty years and below, older women tend to have little understanding and access to information. Young women are more tech-savvy, and consequently have access to a wide spectrum of information. Older women most of the time rely on the mainstream media to relay information to them, which most of the time young women will already have heard or seen on their social media sites. The difference in how young and older women receive information demonstrates that indeed social media is enlightening the modern woman. Women no longer have to wait for their husbands or men to break news to them because they can readily access it on their devices. Perhaps in few years to come, almost every woman will be more enlightened.

It is also vital to understand what the various social media sites entail to find out how they promote women education. To start with Facebook, it allows people to post information and pictures. Facebook also enables people to form groups or create pages through which they discuss various ideas, as well as, promote products. Additionally, Facebook allows communication through sending and receiving of messages. Facebook promotes women education in several ways. First, organizations that tried to promote the empowerment and education of women did not find adequate space and opportunity prior to the creation of social media to address the needs of women conclusively. However, such organizations have found a ready platform to address such concerns (Costa, 2016). For instance, an initiative being spearheaded in Kenya known as Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation (CAFGM) has been pivotal in campaigning against the old practice of circumcising women. One of the tribes, the Maasai, also living in Kenya has been the most prominent in subjecting women against the archaic practice. The strategy used by the organization was opening a Facebook page through which it consolidated efforts to push the government to take stern action against those individuals who conduct the practice. Ultimately, the government banned the practice and anyone found carrying out the practice faces charges in court.

In the case of fighting female genital mutilation, social media pressure has been effective in compelling governments and institutions to address women concerns. Apart from the Kenyan government, the Nigerian government has also banned female genital mutilation (Narayana & Ahamad, 2016). As a result, girls who would have been married off straight after circumcision are taken to school. Many of the women were complacent initially and accepted the practice as part of their tradition. It was a clear demonstration of conformity. Just because girls were told that their mothers had gone through the practice and some even witnessed their older sisters go through it, they did not see anything wrong with it. But with the emergence of social media where women easily get access to information, many girls in communities that practice archaic traditions have escaped from such communities because of the awareness of their rights. Another important thing is that social media has information of the various organizations that support girls and women who run away from brutal practices. Such organizations provide sanctuary to the affected women while providing them with education.

Impact of Social Media in Afghanistan

Apart from African countries, several countries in the Arabic world reportedly have been abusing women rights. For example, when women are invited to attend weddings in Afghanistan, the invitations do not bear their names instead; the invitations bear the name of their husbands, or even male relatives. Overly, names of women are hardly mentioned in any occasions. Social media is still in the infancy stage in Afghanistan, and is mostly used by educated, and wealthy male users. There are also only hundreds of public Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in Afghanistan. However, Arian (2017) and other young women who had just graduated began a social media initiative with the hashtag #whereismyname that was meant to spark a conversation in the country and protest against the custom of not recognizing women. Using social media, Arian began a conversation that she and her friends would have never started. If they had taken the campaign to mainstream media, maybe they would have been blocked or if they had succeeded in being allowed to air their message, it would not have received a large audience.

Arian and her friends may be new to activism but other prominent activists in Afghanistan such as Wazhma Frogh have found power through social media to expand their advocacy. Wazhma uses her Twitter account to create awareness on women’s issues, as well as, to share her thoughts on the current events in Afghanistan. Her Twitter account has over 97,000 followers, despite social media being in infancy in the country (Milbrath, 2013). Wazhma began to use her Twitter account in 2013 when the government allowed members of the public to submit their questions during the televised debates. Wazhma has been an influential voice in Afghanistan such that some of the topics she posts online form the basis for debate in both TV and radio stations. Although it is a challenge to create social change, the issues posted by influential people such as Wazhma at least elicit conversations and with momentum, they can result into real life interactions.

On a global scale, Facebook has acted as an important tool that links women in different parts of the world. Facebook in itself acts as an exchange program. Women are able to share with each other what they face and as a result, enlighten one another. Many women in the third world countries for a long time had the perception that they cannot compete with men in certain fields. Social media has changed this perception; through interaction with their counterparts in the developed countries, women in developing countries get motivated after realizing that other women in the world are utilizing their potential (Gallagher, 2015). Social media is akin to an online social group that is likely to impact women positively. In line with Bandura’s social postulation, women in this online social group can be compared to children. That applies to women coming into contact with social media for the first time. Because many of them are unaware of various world matters, majority of them will tend to imitate positive attributes. Some influential people have social media accounts which they use to address various subjects. Through interaction and reading of content from such accounts, women become impacted positively in regard to education.

Through social media, just like young children in the Bandura experiment, women have discovered themselves. Many have found out that the negative stereotypes that have been propagated about them are not true. For instance, the society used to have the notion that women cannot be leaders. This perception has been turned around through online interaction. Through such interactions, women gain a stronger voice in advocating for particular issues. The advocacy becomes a global issue that prompts action. It is not effective for only sections of the world to champion for women empowerment rather; global movements tend to achieve better results. One of the most remarkable things that social media has been able to achieve is employment of women. Through social media consolidation and facilitation, women all over the world have agitated for equal employment opportunities in all areas of work (Miller, 2016). The global agitation has made many governments to come up with affirmative action whereby women must form a certain percentage of the workforce in various companies. Some women in the past did not find the motivation to go to school or advance their education. After all, they were unlikely to get employed or if they found jobs, they would not be as lucrative as positions held by men. The affirmative action has produced positive results; women can go to school and pursue careers that were predominantly for men. Most of such careers are what are popularly referred to as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Influential women who have achieved success in such fields share their experiences online with other women, hence acting as role models. Young women who are exposed to social media and the internet devices sometimes are influenced by the interactions, which make some of them to pursue technology-related careers.

Although according to many experts social media has brought more merits than demerits, some opinion leaders argue that social media has also impacted women negatively. Since the sites give a lot of freedom to people to share content on whatever topics they like, women gain access to content that does not promote their wellbeing instead; it promotes other undesirable social values. It is common to come across pictures that promote sexism in almost all social media sites (Liddicoat, 2017). Some women use their accounts in trying to show how an ideal woman ought to look like. Instead of sharing ideas that impact women positively, they share almost nude images of themselves. Such photographs tend to propagate the notion that women are sexual organs meant to please men. Social media sites such as Instagram are rife with images of women in semi-nude postures. Women also allow advertising companies to use such compromising photographs to promote their products. There is a notion that such photographs boost advertisement viewership. The result of such images is that women struggle to gain the idyllic body. It is the reason why most women spend time posting photos of themselves to the various social media sites. The objective is always to get positive comments about their looks. If people write negative comments about their appearance, some of them get depressed. 

It is particularly dangerous when young girls come into contact with images that promote sexism. Looking at the Bandura experiment, the young girls think that the dressing or the appearance of the women in the images are the ideal looks. The young girls will try as much as possible to imitate the appearance of the women. Reportedly, some young girls and women have undergone plastic surgery in an attempt to look like some models (Ceulemans & Fauconnier, 2015). While some plastic surgeries have succeeded, some have backfired, making some girls to develop other worse conditions. Using Zimbardo’s perspective, social media is akin to the Stanford University basement prison. In this case, the bad models become the prison guards while young women become the prisoners. Since most of the online bad models have influenced a significant number of women to follow them, they have literary turned them into slaves. They have also managed to turn around the objective of social media to be sites where they feed their audience with whatever content they come up with. It is common to come across questions where women ask the ‘role models’ the type of cosmetics they use to achieve a certain appearance. Other women will try to use different creams or cosmetics to achieve such an appearance. Such women seem to use other women, particularly young women to promote certain products. Seeing that young women are desperate to have good looks, they intensify their campaigns. Most of such models are media celebrities and entertainers. Most of them have managed to influence a lot of women to watch sports or entertainment on the social media sites and forget about their wellbeing. Experts suggest that as long as such models are allowed to continue influencing women, it will be difficult for women to achieve empowerment in regard to education and other positive aspects.

Conclusion

Social media works just like any society only that interactions are carried through the internet. In fact, the internet has a larger audience because it connects people from all over the world. The social media interactions results to both positive and negative outcomes. Since this working paper examines the impact of social media on women’s education, generally, social media has had positive impacts. Since education is a dynamic term, social media has contributed significantly in causing social change in matters related to women. First, social media gives an equal space to both men and women to interact. Through such interactions, both men and women understand each other better. The gender stereotypes often distort the truth about both genders. The freedom of expression helps eliminate such stereotypes. Men understand that women are just like them while women realize that they have potential just like men to attain their goals.

More remarkable is the way various groups and individuals have been using the social media sites to empower women. As earlier mentioned, some organizations are using the social media space to protest against archaic practices, leading to positive outcomes in regard to women education. When organizations create movements through social media to protest against female genital mutilation or early marriages, more young girls go to school. The society also realizes that it needs to give equal opportunities to both girls and boys. Additionally, when social media groups agitate for equal employment opportunities, more women find the motivation to pursue other fields and even advance their studies. However, despite all the efforts to promote the welfare of women, some people with selfish interests continue to influence women negatively. It is important that measures be put in place so that young girls do not get influenced by such models. Although people ought to be given freedom to express themselves on social media, their content need not to influence others negatively.

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