The impact of social media on women’s empowerment in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Abstract

The empowerment of women is currently a vital issue appearing on political agendas at national and international levels. Accordingly, this research investigates the current situation regarding the use of social media (SM) by women in the Kingdom of Bahrain in terms of the preferences, purposes, and restrictions on using SM, the impact of SM, and women’s perception of the role of SM in empowering them economically, socially, and politically. A quantitative method was adopted by sending a total of 400 survey questionnaires to women distributed among the different governorates in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The results revealed that most SM use has a positive effect on the empowerment of women in the Kingdom of Bahrain, except for Snapchat and YouTube. The research findings include recommendations for training women in Bahrain to use SM to draw public attention to women’s rights, enhance the visibility of issues, and train gender promoters in strategic means for organizing online campaigns.

Keywords:

• Social Media
• women’s empowerment
• Twitter
• Facebook: Instagram
• communication
• Snapchat

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to appreciate and acknowledge the valuable contribution and cooperation of Khadja AlMulla, Mahganj Durra and Masooma Rasool in the completion of this research work. They have helped us in collecting data as part of their senior project. Without their help, this work would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaflah AlAmmary

Jaflah AlAmmary is associate professor in the Department of Information Systems in the College of IT at the University of Bahrain. She holds PhD from the University of Murdoch (Australia). Al-Ammary’s research interest focuses on IS strategic planning and management, Educational Technology and E-learning and women in IT. Al-Ammary has conducted number of researches to examine the importance of the educational technology (such as blackboard and Online Collaboration Learning) on enhancing the learning and teaching process at Kingdom of Bahrain.