Women in social networks: focus on lifelong learning and raising self esteem

• Main Authors: Kasperiūnienė, Judita, Rutkauskienė, Danguolė
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Lithuanian; English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Women networking; Rural communities; Mentoring; EU project; MW-Sonet; Dyer; Iceland
• Online Access: http://asu.lvb.lt/ASU:ELABAPDB2815285&prefLang=en_US

A rocky year in the social network space was 2010. This year many sites closed their doors. Quite a few others continued their decline into yesterday's news as we see more social network users consolidating their social profiles (Chappell B., 2011). According to a study from ComScore (2010), social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men. "Women on the Web: How Women Are Shaping the Internet", found that 76% of women visit a social networking site compared to 70% of men. Globally, women demonstrate higher engagement levels with social networking sites than men. Using data from May 2010, ComScore reported that although women comprise 48% of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57% of pages and account for nearly 57% of total minutes spent on these sites (Dyer P. 2010).Taking into account these global, international and national conditions, presumptions and theories; researchers from A. Stulginskis University together with colleagues from Lithuania, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey at the end of 2009 initiated project called "Mentoring rural women through social networks" (MW-Sonet). The main aim of this project is to involve and stimulate local inhabitants (with special attention to rural women) to become active participants of local community life, to become mentors for other community members, other rural women. Project group builds a social network to share ideas, knowledge and skills, empower each network member. This paper discuss few challenges- how to encourage rural women to be more active; how to motivate them for lifelong learning; how to build rural women local, national and international networks. MW- Sonet project results show that women could be active and creative and internet helps to raise self-esteem.