It's a Small World After All: Effects of Global Communication on Women's Empowerment

As mentioned in our week’s reading, global communication, especially via Web 2.0 technologies, has indeed strengthened and broadened our ability as women to share our points of view, stories, needs and our ideas and solutions for the unique trials experienced by peoples across the world. But to take the possibilities and end results of such global communication a step further is to formally realize just how similar human beings are across our beautifully diverse planet.

Despite our differing political, social and religious ideologies, in spite of our vastly different cultural and familial traditions, and beyond our differing day-to-day activities and challenges—we are humans, and we are women. The ability to share such stories and to truly get to the root of these stories’ messages empowers women—and, in growing numbers, the world—to discover the underlying similarities in all our lives, which is imperative in truly understanding one another in generalities and a true sense of unity. And, as it were, it is for me the most exciting facet of global communication—effectively making the world that much “smaller,” or in better terms, more accessible, to every individual no matter one’s gender, race, religion, socioeconomic status, or cultural roles.

Because women have traditionally been denied equal access to education, so too have these uneven numbers been reflected in the statistics of women’s presence in global media—or in other words, the global dissemination of information and stories. History and politics in general have classically ignored the female voice as a result, as traditional media has left the choice of which information is to be published—and how it is presented—in conventionally male hands. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and social media outlets have forever destroyed that traditional barrier and opened the floodgates for women’s stories and perspectives to be shared from and across the world. No longer are women restrained by a lack of education and/or resources, and so no longer can these stories, needs and ideas be ignored by traditional media and the larger public audience.

I have been a music journalist in New Orleans for more than five years, and have used Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and my magazine’s website to promote stories I have researched and written about female musicians, artists and activists in the metropolitan area. From profiling an all-female ska band and promoting that article via Facebook to contacting female musicians on upcoming festival line-ups via Twitter to schedule interviews, I have already been empowered by Web 2.0 technologies in my everyday life to help share the stories of local female artists. I would like to take this the next steps further—nationally and globally—to level out the historic lack of recognition in the arts for women and to promote and preserve the incredibly beautiful and inimitable perspectives of their crafts that women have to offer.