Social media: A revolutionary tool for women empowerment

Social media has provided a platform for women to voice their opinions about matters which affect them which were hitherto unspoken. Social media has proven potential for mobilizing attention and accountability to women's rights, challenging discrimination and stereotypes. Social media has proved to be a powerful vehicle for bringing women's rights issues to the attention of a wider public, galvanizing action on the streets of cities around the world and encouraging policy makers to step up commitments to gender equality. The explosion of social media and unprecedented use by women of new technologies represents important opportunities to bring gender equality and women's rights issues to the forefront of both policy making and media attention.¹⁵

Social media has helped to bring together women who were divided by boundaries united by ideologies. For protest organizers, it is a fast and easy way to create platform, and that makes it easier for people to congregate. Hashtag activism has helped to mobilize public attention on women's rights, increasing the visibility of issues that are under-reported in mainstream media. Social media has been increasingly used by women's grassroots organizations to call for greater public accountability towards gender equality. Following the 2012 gang rape of a young woman in Delhi, the #Delhi Gang Rape hashtag campaign brought the scale of gender-based violence in India into the spotlight. It has also helped to shed light on issues like menstrual hygiene, female genital mutilation etc. which were previously considered as taboo by the main stream media.

This research paper analyzes the role of social media in empowering women, its effect on women's rights, bringing these issues to the forefront of political agenda, social media as a tool for gender sensitization and increasing women's participation in decision making and leadership.