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CHANGE IS OVERDUE
Still studies have shown that women do face extra barriers to visibility on social media.
A paper published in Nature Communications this year looked at academics self-promoting their work on X, and found that women did it 28 per cent less than men. As the authors note, research from other areas already tells us that women have learned to stay quiet about their achievements, partly because of the “adverse reactions” when they do speak out.
This mix of reticence and culturally imposed silence is potentially a huge barrier to success on LinkedIn, a place chock-full of self-promoters (who are, indeed, mostly men).
Whatever the truth behind the drop in women’s visibility, the campaigners make timely points. LinkedIn is overdue a change or challenge.
Microsoft bought it for US$26.2 billion in 2016, yet not much has improved in the user experience. I like the platform, but even for a technologically challenged Gen Xer, it is retro and clunky.
The torching of civility elsewhere on social media handed LinkedIn a golden ticket. It’s a place where you have to say who you really are – and consequently, people usually have polite conversations.
Yes, it can be a bit dull. But as AI-generated posts take over many social feeds, it’s likely that users who post human stories about our lives, as well as our work, will increasingly get sifted to the top.
My best-performing LinkedIn content in 2025? A video I shot on the phone while hiding in a ladies’ bathroom at the office, feeling very sorry for myself: 150,000 views.
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