'Masculine Energy' & Social Media

Saskia

15 Jan 2025 • 5 min read

Do women really control social media?

After last week's announcement regarding moderation on Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has followed the trend of tech billionaires and somehow managed to make it worse.

In my blog last week, I explored Meta and its relationship to decentralised social media now that it was making some serious changes to its moderation in the U.S. in response to political pressures.

Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has done the tech-bro thing and featured on a podcast - Joe Rogan's podcast. On which he said:

I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it.

So, does social media, Mark's corner of the corporate world, really need more 'masculine energy' as he suggests?

Women In Tech

Across the board, women have not been welcome in the world of tech. There are a number of reasons and theories as to why, but none of those fix the issue.

35% of the tech workforce, globally, are women.

At Meta, only 25.8% of tech roles were filled by women in 2022. At X, that rises to 30.9% (as of 2021, the number is now likely lower).

So, at Meta, how many women call the shots? How many women steer the company and its decisions to femininity?

Of Meta's overall workforce in 2022, 37.1% were women - across all departments. In leadership & management, women represented 36.7% of employees.

Women in management at Meta reflected women hired overall quite well. However, with numbers so far below equality, is it possible that these women have somehow waved a pink femininity wand and ruined Meta? No. Not at all.

In fact, women have practically no say in the direction of social media. This is the percentage of women in leadership positions at top social media companies in 2022:

Snap Inc. - 29.1%

Pinterest - 47%

LinkedIn - 45.1%

Twitter/X - 39% (2021)

To make matters worse, Meta themselves have just announced they're cutting 5% of their global workforce. Sadly, it doesn't take a vivid imagination to know the demographic of staff that will be cut as Meta pump up the testosterone.

It might be hard to acknowledge, since we're driving people to New Social platforms. But it's not much better over on the 'better' side of social media either.

At Mastodon gGmbH, the organisation behind Mastodon, no women fill senior positions, although there are women on the small team at Mastodon gGmbH.

At Bluesky the project is run by a woman, Jay Graber, but I can't find evidence of any other women in senior positions [EDIT: Bluesky also has a female COO]. That being said, women are a part of the small (but growing) team at Bluesky too.

Bluesky being led by a woman is pretty amazing when you look at the competition. I can't imagine the extra hoops and hurdles Jay faced - and probably still faces - to steer Bluesky in the direction that she wants.

Masculinity In Crisis

Perhaps I am a cynic or just a young adult in a weird world, but masculinity seems to perpetually be in crisis. Maybe it is actually masculine to be in crisis and we've all been missing the point. Either way, this is another case of that.

When I first started this blog, one of my favourite pieces was on Masculinity on X. There I explored the effect of the Übermensch, the man, the alpha male character made popular by the likes of Andrew Tate.

This isn't an issue on social media, it is across society. Men, young and old, are going through a toxic breakup with the fact they'll never be the man.

So, how do they react? By being more man. They keep finding more extreme ways to try and prove it, more extreme men to wish they were.

For Zuckerberg, that means hitting his friends (more accurately, martial arts which are not at all a 'male' thing), letting people say homophobic slurs, and polishing the boots of Donald Trump, incoming U.S. President.

How do we fix it?

Have you heard of diversity initiatives, programmes built into a companies structure to ensure their hiring practises better reflect society? Especially at a social media company, where you're creating a space for all kinds of people, that'd be important - right?

Unfortunately, that's another thing Meta are getting rid of.

The 'better' platforms aren't doing any better either (although they're not as against diversity) - something we need to acknowledge instead of pretending that everything is perfect away from Big Tech.

Honestly, I believe the best way to fix this issue is for women to actually do something about it.

Around 70% of jobs in social media (the consumer side) are filled by women. These aren't normally roles which really allow you to make impactful changes to social media as a whole, but if women refuse to use the platforms which deem their 'energy' as lesser then perhaps they can make a change.

I have seen a lot of women working in social media posting on LinkedIn - pissed off at Meta, Zuckerberg, and the treatment they receive from the platforms that need them and their brands. Some are moving, but it is not enough.

Zuckerberg is right when he says this is about society. So, to prevent being pushed to the back of the society room, women need to be loud again. Just because the men are having a crisis, it doesn't mean that the women should move aside to make them feel better.

If ever there was a place to start a culture war, it was always going to be on Facebook.