Gender Based Stereotypes In Social Media

The inequality, discrimination, and violation against women, which are both violation of human rights and barriers which deprive women of enjoying their rights, parallel to the advances in the technology, expanded into new areas. For example, hate speech has spread in social media on the internet, online advertisements are reproducing and deepening gender based stereotypes (Svensson & Edström, 2015, p. 480), in new industries like game industry share of women is lower than men (Edström & Mølster, 2014, pp. 162–163). On the other hand, new technologies have provided new opportunities for empowerment of women (Edström, 2015). Social media is used by women rights campaigns, there are successful experiences of eliminating gender based stereotypes

Thanks to the expansion of smartphones and new generations of SIMs, billions of people are using the internet and social media in their everyday life. Social medias like YouTube benefit the hunger of people to watch videos or scrolling newsfeeds. These companies by putting advertisement between the public content make money however many of these advertisements contain gender based stereotypes, particularly about the work division. For example, in an Iranian social media named “Apparat”, there are advertisements in which women are using detergents to wash dishes or discussing the quality of olive oil for cooking or baby-sitting while men are watching TV. Also people themselves easily can comment the post of celebrities in Facebook or Instagram and there is no prohibition on hate speech.

c. The access of women to technology is also one of the matters. The report of ITU 2016 shows not only there is still a gap between women and men access to the internet, but it shows that the gender gap over ally in the world increased in comparison with 2013 (UN specialized agency for ICTs (ITU), 2016). The gap could be the result of different issues such as the lack of control of women on the money they earn, illiteracy of women, poverty, disagreement of their husband or father

In last few years, using the internet and virtual financial purchase by activists, working on the empowerment, entrepreneurship and small businesses and fundraising for women, became a new tool. One of the considerable cases is a project named Dadtadast (Hand to Hand ). The woman, who have their own business, in rural and poor areas often do not gain sufficient return of their capital because and the main profit of their products goes to dealers and became. So a group of activists, for increasing the income of these women, provided a website as a platform which enables women to present and sell their products directly with a small portion of charge which is added to funds for new enterprises.

e. While there is steel many challenges about the reproductive health. New advances in technology and science as well as the expanding trend of mobile phone usage, could play a crucial role in decreasing maternal and child mortality (Nyamawe & Seif, 2014).

f. ICT advances have provided a ground for increasing the education. Women are usually more illiterate than men and advances in technology can provide tools for women. One of the good examples in this area is the Gobi Radio Literacy program of UNESCO which enabled 15000 women to read and write (Meleisea, 2006, p.