This is our research work which me and my friend did on Facebook , we have have tried to highlight that how male and female use Facebook differently , it is a statistical research hope you will get benefits from this.
1. Introduction;
Facebook;
Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social
networking service based in Menlo Park, California. It is the best way of communication
with people even out of the country, through this we can easily communicate to our
relative and family no matter whey are living in which part of the world. The Facebook
website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with
fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew
McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the
website's membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher
education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford
University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities,
and eventually to high school students as well. Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at
least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though
variations exist in the minimum age requirement, depending on applicable local laws.
Gender Analysis
Gender analysis is a type of socio-economic analysis that uncovers
how genderrelations affect a development problem. The aim may just be to show
that genderrelations will probably affect the solution, or to show how they will affect the
solution and what could be done.
In many developing societies, although not in all, women have traditionally been
disadvantaged compared to men. Until recently, studies of these societies for the
purpose of planning development covered women narrowly in terms of population,
health and family planning. Relatively little was known about other concerns such as
domestic violence or involvement in economic activities. Gender analysis provides more
information, bringing benefits to women and to society as a whole. The Women in
Development approach emerged in the 1970s, calling for treatment of "women's issues"
in development projects. Later, the Gender and Development approach proposed more
emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing women's issues in isolation. Gender
analysis also mean to highlight those activities which are performed by male and female
differently rather it is in society in government in media in politics in culture and many
other field.
Purposes of our research
Our purposes of research is to highlight those activities
on Facebook which shows gender inequality on Facebook means how male and female
use Facebook differently like difference in display picture, status, post, friends list,
profile name, number of friends, privacy policy, contact, address and many other
differences can be seen on Facebook all these activities are different among male and
2. female hence we have named our this research “Gender analysis on Facebook” in
gender analysis we also try to highlight that what is the level of gender discrimination on
Facebook. Although there is gender discrimination on whole social media but our focus
is Facebook. Specially in Muslim societies females are restricted to use social media
openly females are not being incouraged to use social media if they use they are bound
not to use it openly like male, social media is not considered good or healthy activity for
females in conservative societies, society see those female with different perspectives
who use social media then those who do not use social media simply we can say that
females are discouraged to use Facebook in conservative societies there are many
religious and cultural barriers which does not allow and appreciate female to use social
media. There are also many females in Muslim countries who use social media as
openly as males just because they belong to liberal societies, and they mostly belong to
big cities and conservative are mostly belong to rural areas, in our country majority of
population belong to rural areas it means majority of our peoples are conservatives they
are strictly bound by societal and religious rules and barriers. Secularization promote
gender equality, we can observe that secular people allow their daughters to use social
media and they provide equal opportunities for both their daughters and sons means
they promote gender equality because they have less religious and cultural barriers they
are less likely to follow cultural and religious norms and values.
How female use Facebook;
Note;
The purposes of our research is not to criticize any group, sect or any region or we are
not here to highlight what is right or what is wrong, our purposes is just to highlight the
gender related issues on Facebook that how society have created barriers for females
or male which restricted them how to use social media and its differently apply on male
and female.
In this research we have found that how female use Facebook differently from male.
First we have observed that female are less likely to use Facebook only in muslim
conservative societies and those who are using they avoid sharing their personal
contact, real address, real display picture, real profile name and pictures, and other
information through which she can be identified, only their friend or relatives knows her
on Facebook.
We have found that most of our friends are males it shows that Facebook is used
dominantly by males, and very less numbers of our friends are females and they mostly
do not share their real information like address, contact, profession or pictures and they
3. have very strong privacy that not everyone can visit their timelines or sent friend
request, females are not more likely to share their ideas openly.
We have found many female friends who even do not share their real name on profile,
and there are also many friends who have not added their family members just because
they do not want their family will know that they are using Facebook, some of them use
two account another account for family members another for friends and collages.
I have about 150 female friends on Facebook through this research I have found that
about 20% of those friends are fake means they are boys having female id, when I was
new on Facebook I had randomly sent request to most of the girls, those who are real
having real account they do not use their real picture in profile if they accidently upload
real picture then it will be half picture means you cannot see her face clearly picture
may be from back side or from front side by spreading hear over her face or put the
emoji on their face, rarely if some female upload their real picture they will not be
appreciated by society it will create a problem in her family and sometime it leads to
honour killing, society labelled such girl bad character and it becomes embarrassment
for her family if you will visit females profile very rarely you can see their friend list
otherwise most of the girl keep their friend list hide from their friend. If a female upload
status she is very strictly bound to follow the norm and values of Facebook which are
created differently for male and female. Male can upload status what they want even if it
is against the norms and values of Facebook public do not mind the male activities
which are against the norms of Facebook, simply the norm and values are more applied
on female and less likely applied on male. If we talk about the personal contacts or
addresses on most of the female have wrong information about their contacts and
addresses we can say that female use Facebook as a secret agent that actually no one
knows who is she, and some of the girl provide their correct information which are only
can be seen by her friends if they know each other in real life. All these groups of
Facebook users which I have talked about belongs to conservative family background
who strictly follow the religious and cultural norms and values that is why they do not
use social media as openly as male do. There is another group of girls on Facebook
who use more openly even then boys they are called modern liberal people which
means they do not follow or less likely follow religious and cultural norms and values
and they promote gender equality in the name of gender equality they do all they
activities on social media which even male do not. Their basic information like
addresses or contacts are as public as male account, these are the people who belong
to modern liberal family background.
How male use Facebook;
As we have talked about how female use Facebook, now I am going to explain how
male use Facebook which is very different from female, according to our research we
have found that most of our friends are male it means male are dominantly using
Facebook, about all the friends having real information about him they use real picture
on profile picture, they all have plenty of friends male, female, local friends, foreigner
4. friends, Muslim friends, non-Muslim friends, black friends, white friends, all the variety of
people in this world are the friends of about every male on Facebook, some of male
friends have 1-3 accounts they use separate account for family, friends and other group
of friends some of boy having 1 female account which they use to make fool of other
boys or to make relation with other girls, all these happens just because the society do
not criticize male activities, religious and cultural norms and values are mostly applies
on female in our society that is the another reason that why male and female use social
media differently.
Controversiality of Facebook for females;
How Facebook is controversial in our society for female that some people strictly do not
allow female to use Facebook.
There are many example in our society that a female have been killed after rape and
they both start their friendship on Facebook, some of the female fall in love on
Facebook with anyone they become free and share every information that he want and
they become very close and the purposes of any male to become friend with female is
just to get benefits, not everyone thought like this but the most have the same purposes
mean just to get benefits from female, so this kind of activities some time leads to gang
rape robbery and to kill someone, not only male do all these negative activities there are
also some example where female use male for their purposes like robbery but the most
of the accident happen on Facebook against female.
This was an important reason of why females are not using Facebook openly and why
society have created some barriers specifically for females.
Conclusion;
Our purposes on this research was gender analysis and we have concluded that how
male and female use Facebook differently how female are discriminated on Facebook
and also we have discussed those reasons that leads gender inequality on Facebook,
we belong to rural conservative family that is why we have focused on difference of use
of Facebook by giving example of rural and urban areas people, means how
conservative and religious people think of Facebook and how liberals and modern
people think of Facebook and what are the impact of these all type of people on youth
and their usage of Facebook. We have fond that male and female have very different
approach to Facebook which is directly related to their family background, religious
background, cultural background and different societal barriers which shows the
limitation of use of Facebook for the youth.