The Queen is King of Social Media – Part II – Be the Change
This photo was taken on March 8th, 1975 during an International Women’s Day(IWD) march in Australia. Fast-forward 37 years and, regrettably, women are still fighting against the same stereotypes, discrimination, and sexism that have plagued them since Adam blamed Eve for making him eat the apple. In the first post, we clearly established that there is still a glass ceiling in social media. In this post, I asked two of the strongest women I know – Michele Price and Gini Dietrich – to discuss how we’re going to breakthrough it.
PROLOGUE
Before I turn it over to my guests, I want you to look at the picture again. Look at the passion that these women displayed while standing up for a unified cause. It’s rather inspiring if you ask me, but where is this fervor from the women in today’s society? I think it’s largely absent. We just celebrated IWD, but quite frankly, I saw a bigger buzz on national talk like a pirate day. That’s arrrrrghregious.
So where did all of the strong feelings from women go over the last 20-30 years? Search timelines for the Women’s movement – I dare you. Google says nothing has happened in the movement since the early 90′s, unless you dig to page 2… and who ever gets THAT far? Ladies, don’t give up – stand up – and create some new search results for our Googling pleasure!
MICHELE PRICE @prosperitygal
What I find amusing is before Chris, Scott, Jay, and Scott were popular as they are now, conferences put them in the line up. Had these same events taken a more balanced perspective in thinking about their audience, they would have served them a different variety of speakers. Instead they take the easy way out and continue to bore us all with the same Men-ummhh excuse me -people.
WHO is in the audience? Are they really 100% men? Why would the same business principles be different for conferences? “Serving your customers well.”
Being willing to be unreasonable is where breakthroughs originate. If conferences feel having women are unreasonable-wonder what the breakthrough results might be for the conference that made a point of having it’s keynotes be MORE women. Imagine the social media impact that would occur -generating more buzz.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable adapts the world to him. All progress depends on the unreasonable man” George Bernard Shaw.
Who will be the catalyst and make a commitment to to “BE” that progress. Good gracious women of the early 1900′s are turning in their graves seeing us relive the same things over and over. Where is the progress? Women submit when there is a call for speakers.
I am going to have a nice strong cup of coffee now as I am thoroughly disappointed that we are even having to have this conversation in 2012. Thank you for having the courage to say it out-loud and point out where the Emperor has no clothes.
Michele and Gini are highly successful, motivated women making a difference TODAY. We need to start another movement – the women in the Women’s Day march 37 years ago only had handmade signs and their voice. We have Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to raise awareness. Just last week, on our fanpage, we recognized nearly 50 women for their greatness in Social Media. We’ve done something, now the question is, what are you going to do?
Photo courtesy of The National Archives of Australia
