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Allow Us To Explain

Facebook, Women, And Breastfeeding: Which Of These Don’t Belong?

by Jill Pantozzi | 2:02 pm, February 6th, 2012


According to two recent articles about the social networking site Facebook, the answer would be both women and breastfeeding. Facebook’s move to public offering shed light on the fact that the company has no women on its board. They’re also facing backlash from mothers who’ve had photos of themselves breastfeeding their babies removed from the website. What gives? 

The Hollywood Reporter writes, “In Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, Mark Zuckerberg created [Facebook] because a girl scorned him, and director David Fincher’s film chronicles the construction of an online forum by a group of young men who are too awkward or uncomfortable to effectively interact with their female counterparts.” So, how close was the film to real life?

Sheryl Sandberg has held the position of the company’s chief operating officer since 2008 (and is an advocate for gender equality) but all seven of its board directors are male according to a recent Bloomberg piece. “Just 11.3 percent of the Fortune 500 had male-only boards last year, according to Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit that researches women and business issues.”

The Bloomberg article also points out that having a woman on board usually helps businesses. “A Catalyst survey of Fortune 500 companies found that those with three or more female directors outperformed those with fewer between 2005 and 2009, achieving on average 43 percent better return on equity. As Facebook prepares to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering, the composition of its board shows its business strategy is faulty, said Susan Stautberg, co-founder of New York-based Women Corporate Directors, which promotes female board membership. ‘It doesn’t make sense for a company that claims to be so forward looking to not have any women directors,’ she said. ‘If they just have an old boy’s network in the boardroom, they won’t have access to diverse ideas and strategies.’”

And yes, the majority of Facebook’s 800 million users are women. Fifty- eight percent to be exact. Some of those users are experiencing difficulty when it comes to sharing life-moments, something the site was created explicitly for.

According to CNet, “These days, its rules state that breast-feeding pictures are OK, as long as they don’t feature ‘an exposed breast where the child is not actively engaged in nursing.’ However, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that some of the world’s mothers believe their pictures have been flagged as inappropriate and their accounts shut down a little too often.”

As a response, parents are organizing ”nurse-ins” and are using Facebook to help do it. What exactly is a ”nurse-in?” It’s mothers breastfeeding outside their local Facebook offices.

“The main focus of the protests is the Facebook page of breast-feeding activist Emma Kwasnica of Vancouver,” writes CNet. “She says her account has been shut down four times and that 30 of her pictures have been flagged as inappropriate. The problem with that, of course, is that anyone can flag any of your public pictures as inappropriate.”

“This is discrimination. There’s no other way to look at it. We’re being treated as pornographers,” said Kwasnica. ”Breast-feeding moms, especially ones with infants, spend hours a day with their children at their breast. They’re not trying to be sexually explicit. This is just part of their everyday lives.”

Kwasnica was able to have a conference call with Facebook representatives recently but it did not ease her concerns. ”It is obvious to me now that Facebook really has lost control of their network,” she said, “Especially when their written policy clearly states they support the sharing of breast-feeding images, yet they say they cannot control the actions of their employees who keep removing breast-feeding images and who block accounts of the users who post them–usually ‘in error.’ This is exasperating to me.”

With Facebook going public and privacy concerns constantly running rampant, it’s interesting to see how much Facebook belongs to the users and how much still belongs to Facebook.

(via The Hollywood Reporter and CNet)

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  • Anonymous

    it’s not like women who are posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding their children are exhibitionists !  breastfeeding is work and it’s nice to see people showing what is good and natural :) Hopefully Facebook can start recognizing this…

  • Anonymous

    I couldn’t get past the first half of The Social Network because of the hateful, misogynist attitude expressed by several of the characters.  This is not normal for me, sure I might see a movie with sexist characters and get irritated, but it has never bothered me so much that I couldn’t continue watching, at least not that I can remember.  It also made me worry that the people who those characters are based on might actually act like that .  This only adds weight to that fear.

  • http://twitter.com/crlanei C. R. Lanei

    This is a general curiousity–in what context do people want to share breastfeeding pictures with their friends online? I don’t feel like Facebook should be blocking/removing them though.

  • Anonymous

    It sounds like the problem is with the flagging as inappropriate process, and not with Facebook (or its management) per se.  I have no doubt there are people trolling through FB and the Internet in general, seeking out things to be offended by, and complaining about them.  Then they take advantage of the flag function, which likely has a zero-tolerance, “Guilty until proven innocent” facet to it, so that no FB employee has to sit there and make judgement calls on each pic, unless expressly asked to by the OP.

    The no women on the board thing, I got nothing.

  • Anonymous

    the only time I have shared a picture is when I thought it was either funny or adorable.  so.. once. :p we were all exhausted and the baby was hanging there and you could see how tired I was :)

  • Anonymous

    When you’re a new mom, if the best pic you take in months happens to have a baby attached to your boob, you take what you can get.

    Or, you happen to think the baby looked especially adorable while nursing.

    Or, you spend nearly all of your waking hours nursing those first few weeks and think a breastfeeding pic accurately represents your life right now.

    Or….

    There are a lot of reasons.

  • Anonymous

    Some people just like sharing stuff about themselves on facebook, even if it’s intimate or downright not interesting at all.

    Then there are people who wish to share their love for their child with as many people as possible. Parents tend to be enthusiastic about their kids.

    And then there are people who would post pictures to do something about the stigma on public breastfeeding as if it’s some kinky sex act rather than feeding a child the best meal they can get at that stage of their life.

  • Athene Numphe

    As one of the moms who went out and protested, thank you for such a well-written and thoughtful article!

  • Anonymous

    Speaking as a chap who thinks breasts are just the bee’s knees, the rampant sexualisation of these practical components of the human anatomy bothers me no end, because the end result is situations like this.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Codi-Brooke-Berry/1158512990 Codi Brooke Berry

    I like him ^.

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