‘Our’ right to be heard amplified: Web 2.0

We are shifting away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, toward one in which everyone has a more active stake in the production and consumption of information. Web 2.0 services, through the use of open standards for exchanging information, are increasing our ability to publish and remix information. Many commercial applications, like Google maps, Flickr (a photo sharing service) and YouTube (a popular video sharing platform), are cost-free and rely on content produced by users. And furthermore it has created new styles of participation that have the potential to change the relationship between producers and consumers of information, putting communities in the driving seat and it has made local relationships and connections visible to global audiences with an intensity and scope that was impossible before.

For so long women have been restricted to the private sphere, which is the home, but the advent of Web 2.0 has helped women across the globe to integrate into the public sphere, it has opened up a direct window for women to the outside world . Web 2.0 offers services that are powerful tools for women to overcome chauvinism achieve full equality, well-being and participation in the decisions that determine their lives and the future of their communities.

The days of being seen and not heard are over, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs websites have helped women to convene and form movements towards their empowerment. I was awed by the power and magnitude of One Billion Rising; the biggest mass global action to end violence against women and girls in the history of humankind. It was a brilliant uprising empowered by social media which influenced billions of minds. It created global solidarity strength cutting across borders, races, class, religions, sexual orientation, ages, gender and it also created or was the catalyst for the development of millions of women citizen social media journalists telling their own stories. It rekindled the culture of sisterhood amongst women on a global scale. It went viral; it caught the media houses’ attention, women were rising together and sharing their ideas on how to eradicate this scourge. People posted photos, and provided links to their flash mob videos, and testimonies.

Web 2.0 technologies have revolutionized communication; it has enabled the democratization of information. It has allowed individuals to express their reality on their own terms and actually publish them at an extremely low cost and with no technical expertise needed.