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This blog was coauthored by Maiya Moncino, a research associate in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

We have written previously about the power of the #MeToo movement—the social media phenomenon that shed light on sexism across industries, including the humanitarian aid sector, and gave women a platform to speak out about sexual abuse. While women are still underrepresented in media generally, social media encourages a more level playing field, allowing for the voices of women from a wider array of backgrounds and countries, with or without traditional power, to be heard.

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Indeed, social media has opened a new frontier for women’s rights organizing. For one, it encourages solidarity and emphasizes shared experiences. Moira Donegan, the creator of the controversial “Media Men List,” wrote about how the #MeToo movement revealed a rift in modern-day feminism between an ethos of individualism and self-sufficiency—or “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”—and the collective liberation approach represented by the #MeToo movement. Donegan Articles on Feminism argues that the #MeToo movement brings to light a strain of feminism focused on community and solidarity, which reshapes the feminist project. The movement is premised on the idea that we all share responsibility for eliminating sexism, striving for a world in which no woman has to claim #MeToo.

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Women are still underrepresented in traditional media. According to the 2017 Women’s Media Center report, women receive only 38 percent of bylines in print, TV, Internet, and wire news. And only 15 percent of Wikipedia contributors are women. As discussed in a CFR paper one of us published, women are also underrepresented in the technology sector – significant, since social media enlists technology to amplify traditional media.

Social media has the potential to close this gap. In a study at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, researchers found that in countries with large gender inequities in offline life, women were more likely to have significant online presences. In Pakistan, for example, women on average had more followers on Google+ (twenty-five versus sixteen) and Twitter (600 versus 222) than their male counterparts.