Social Media: An Alternative Space For Meitei Women’s Empowerment

Abstract

Social media has become an important agent to empower women in various fields in the recent past. Social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Youtube etc. have emerged as revolutionary spaces for self-expression, information dissemination, education and learning, leisure and creativity, marketing and e-commerce, activism for women’s rights and issues and networking for women. Social media has opened a new frontier for women’s rights organizations. For one, it encourages solidarity and emphasizes shared experiences.  This research paper attempts to examine whether social media can be an important agent to empower women in Manipur especially Meitei women. By disrupting the mainstream male-centric media industry structure, and offering a more flexible, inclusive domain, it analyses whether social media has become the crucial alternative space for the empowerment of women for more active and meaningful participation in society. Social media proves to be the potential for mobilising attention and accountability to women’s rights and challenging discrimination and stereotypes. This research paper explores how social media serves as a powerful tool for addressing women’s issues. It has proved to be a powerful vehicle for bringing women’s rights issues to the attention of a wider public, galvanising action on the streets of cities around the world and encouraging policymakers to step up commitments to gender equality. It attempts to analyse the role of social media in empowering women, it also covers its effect on women’s rights, bringing these issues to the forefront of political agenda, social media as a tool for gender sensitization and increasing women’s participation in decision making. This study used analytical and exploratory methods which are based on both primary and secondary sources. Thus, social media has been increasingly used by women at the individual level as well as by women’s organizations to call for greater public accountability towards gender equality in society.