second rough raft

11.29.12

Alysha Guzman

English 1A

Women and the internet

Dear Women of the internet

For most of known history society assigned gender roles to keep an order that it believed to be a necessity for people to have in order to happily co-exist. These roles made people identify themselves by what anatomy they had and allowed very little flexibility. Their identity determined their social worth and where only seen as normal if they followed these roles which didn’t always led them to be happy with themselves. But with time and slow social changes many of the old notions of what it meant to be masculine or famine have begun to fade into obscurity. We as women still have hurtles to go over just to become fully equal such as being paid the same wages as men or having as many seats in congress as men do but since the 60’s a lot of progress has been made towards equality among the sexes. But in order to continue on with gaining equality we have to look at a new frontier, the internet. The internet is shaping our world as well as ourselves and as our world continues to embrace the internet as a tool, a hangout, and a market place then we need to not only continue to learn how to use it but how to thrive with it. The internet can be a wonderful tool but it’s important to know how to balance it into our lives.

In the early days of the internet men dominated the web. They began to mold the internet to what we know as the web today. But according to Elisa Camahort Page co-founder of BlogHer, a popular network of bloggers says "Women are the drivers of social media. Women are the major users of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, and every social media site except YouTube. They are engagers. They are sharers. It is natural to a women's personality to say why she buys something and why she like it. Women love to share news about the bargains that they got. They love deals and they love to talk about it." (McKenna). Because women tend to go into depth about things that interests them corporations and small companies are realizing how important female blogs are. I’ve noticed that when I read some of my favorite blogger from time to time they mentioned places they’ve been to and things they have bought or would like to buy. In my experience I’ve noticed that bloggers (those who write down an online journal) and vloggers (those who make videos) generally have two types of viewers; those who reply to the blogger in their comments and those who silently read the comments. In this format women blogger have become a major asset to companies since their options are generally and the publicity are free.

 People who are able to contribute to our economy hold great power. In our society it’s been made clear that the one thing stronger than thought or opinions is a person’s wallet. From the boycotts of buss from the civil rights movement to the last Presidential election our society is affected by what people do and don’t buy.  

The internet will continue to find its way into our lives as time goes on. It will evolve in the coming years and we as well do so alongside it.