In the Recent years, we have seen social media becoming an important source of data for researchers. It also allows them to observe everyday social interactions and to get insights into the reproduction of gender inequality. A new study conducted by researchers from the Higher School of Economics saw them finding out that both men and women mention sons more often than daughters online.
Elizaveta Sivak and Ivan Smirnov used public posts about children made by 6,35,665 users from Saint Petersburg on the most popular Russian social networking site VK. Common topics for such posts included celebrations of different achievements and important events, expression of love, affection, and pride and reports on spending time with the children. Their results demonstrate gender imbalance: there are 20% more posts about sons than about daughters on social media.
Previous studies have shown that children’s books are dominated by male central characters; in textbooks, females are given fewer lines of text; and in films, on average, twice as many male characters as female ones are in front of the camera. Gender imbalance in public posts may send yet another message that girls are less important and interesting than boys and deserve less attention. Furthermore, researchers also found that posts about sons receive, on average, 1.5 times more likes. The posts about daughters written by the mother, on average, receive 6.7 likes from women, and 1.1 likes from menThe gender preference in sharing information about children may seem quite harmless compared with other layers of gender disparity. However, given the widespread popularity of social media, even moderate bias might accumulate. Millions of users are exposed to a gender-biased news feed on a daily basis and, without even noticing, receive the reaffirmation that paying more attention to sons is normal.
