Gender parity in the workplace starts with controlling our life-brand | Irina Soriano | TEDxWaterStreet
A 36 second video/audio testimonial of a young woman that suffered severe life-brand damage.
This is a loving family’s daughter. A random, uneventful night damaged her life beyond repair when she woke up one morning to find out someone decided to publish an image of that evening on social media without her consent. She did not act with the intention to harm anybody or to express her identity that night. Yet, when there is a picture, there is a story. To protect her from further harm, I cannot reveal the details, but what I will say is that she lost countless job opportunities, friends, her confidence and self-esteem. What she received in return were serious death threats and strangers rallying others to go to her home. She feared someone would harm her family. Sharing her story without being able to reveal her identity, because she is scared for her life, has no benefit to her. She gets no credit for this. She made the tough decision to come forward, so tomorrow morning it won’t be your child and family that wakes up to a life in ruins.
I am a Millennial. My first phone was a Nokia. I made my first Facebook post at 24 and bought my first iPhone at 26. When I grew up, we called each other rather than sending text messages and emojis, and we let loose without even thinking it was possible that the entire world could be having access to what we were doing as teenagers. Virtually everyone in this world today owns a smartphone, we are exposed to constant visibility. Gen Xers, let’s pretend all your 15-year-old buddies or girlfriends you hung out with in your parent’s basement 30 years ago had smartphones, recording devices. Imagine that making out with that girl or boy from next door, smoking illegal substances, and getting drunk beyond no return and pulling your pants down and shirts up would now see the light of day being broadcasted to millions of people through social media. How do you think this would impact your life, your career, and your family? Almost half of the adults surveyed by Euro RSCG worry that friends or family will share personal information online about them that they don’t want to be made public. Appearing on social media is not your choice alone, sooner or later someone is likely to make that choice for you.
But it’s not just others that contribute to our lifetime content library. Children are handed smartphones and access to the internet at the age of 11 these days. In many cases it surely is for safety reasons so kids can communicate with parents in case of emergency. When handing over that first smartphone, we are also handing over the temptation to find a way to explore the virtual world that lives within it. This act of intended safety happens way before kids and young adolescents have the maturity to navigate the roads of the internet and social media in a responsible way without exposing themself and others to possible harm. We are letting them behind the wheel of their future before they have reached the legal driving age.
Part of Generation Z, kids and young adults of the ages 8–23, but especially the following generation that was entirely born in the 21st century are growing up with smartphone and social media access from day one. And they are unaware that with the first social media post their parents shared featuring them, and all the photos, videos, and comments they post online once they have access to social media, they have started developing a ‘life-brand’.
SLIDE: Life-Brand
A life-brand is our digital fingerprint. It is unique to each person. It is shaped by the collection of publicly accessible content shared by or featuring us, you and I, such as photos, videos, audio recordings, social media posts, and comments. Life-brand literally has a life of its own if not controlled by us — it gains power and strength over a lifetime the more content we accumulate in the cloud (or on paper, if you grew up with Kodak cameras like me). We all possess one life-brand. Just one. Imagine every potential piece of content you might share with the world like a bad tattoo you once got that you now want to get rid off. You can cover it up or laser it away, but the trace of it will always remain. We can go ahead and delete that embarrassing photo on social media we are not proud of, but chances are our BFF that one day might divorce us, has already taken a screenshot if it.
This next generation born between 2012 and 2030 will be defined by their life-brands; they will either become a victim of it, or, with the right awareness and education, they can be the most powerful generation to ever have lived.
SLIDE: GENERATION BRAND
I am referring to this specific group of kids and future young adults as ‘Generation Brand’. This is the first-ever generation entirely exposed to uncontrolled life-brand creation from birth initially through their parents that start building kids life-brands with the first pictures and videos they share online featuring them.
Girls and future young women of Generation Brand are particularly impacted by possible life-brand damage, more than any other generation. Current trends show 78% of women use social media over 65% of men.
There is an assumption to be made that this could be correlated to a bigger desire to be liked for girls and young women. I would go as far to say that getting responses to social media posts can lead to ‘like-addiction’. And with addiction comes a build-up of tolerance. Especially girls and young women that develop early like-addiction have the pressure to post more unseen, sexy, or controversial content, even if this contrasts to who they actually are and misrepresents their true identity. It is a spiral of ‘like-pressure’, who gets the most likes, the quickest. With that comes a higher risk to harm our life brand and possibly our future.
What furthermore comes into play, is that women are also a greater target for online harassment. The Guardian has conducted research into the 70 million comments left on their site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers, eight were women. We also know that especially young women and girls are three times more likely to experience cyber bullying online than boys and young men. Cyberbullying ties into life-brand cultivation and how it can damage the life-brand journey, especially for females.
Research has also shown that there is a confidence gap between women and men that significantly impacts how women drive and manage their careers compared to their male counterparts and this is true for the current generation of women in the workplace. Studies have also suggested that female confidence builds with age and experience, over the course of a lifetime. Taking that into account, technically speaking, professional women are already at a disadvantage when it comes to advancing their careers to senior leadership and executive positions compared to their male peers by ‘confidence-default’. And those are women like me, they have not grown up being surrounded by social media, possibly suffering confidence-hits with every click, scroll, swipe, and comment they receive.
If we think about females of Generation Brand, that are growing up with social media exposure since day one of their lives initially through their Millennial and Gen Z parents, we are looking at a generation that exposes their possibly already lowered self-confidence to cyber-bullying, backlash, and criticism with little to no education on how to act, react, and digest such attacks on the self. The expectation for future women of Generation Brand to enter their educational path and the workforce with strong confidence and self-belief is not just unrealistic, it’s unattainable if the social media landscape they are growing up in remains as is.
Putting girls in the social media driver’s seat without educating them on the impact their interactions on social media have on their life-brand, means we send them to drive on the ‘autobahn’ without a seatbelt. The consequences can be deadly to their confidence. Without this life-saving education, we are shaping a generation of future professional females that will not be well positioned to impact gender parity and equality in business and beyond.
That being said, if we invest in educating Generation Brand, and especially the future professional women of this generation, on the concept of life brand before we even give them access to the internet and social media, the girls of Generation Brand we will be hiring in a few years from now, are the true game changers and hold the power to drive a cultural paradigm shift toward full gender equality.
The current statistics on gender parity in business are well known, we have been talking about this for decades: There is an underrepresentation of women on manager levels and that is the true source for a lack of female leadership pipeline. Women lack sponsorship from executives. Women get paid significantly less than men, women are also less likely to choose higher paying occupations. Studies have also shown that young teenage females already have strong gender biases against female leaders. And let’s not forget the global COVID-19 pandemic that pushed million of women out of the workforce.
We know companies have a lot of work to do to help remove gender biases to shape a better future for women and especially women of color in the workplace, nobody will debate that. But the only way to achieve full gender parity in business and beyond is to create awareness and educate young women on the concept of life-brand early, so they can develop strong confidence and self-esteem through their life-brand and position themselves equally to their male peers in the workplace. This will give women the power to drive this change themselves.
If we look at both dilemmas, the lack of gender equality and the negative impact social media has on our current and next generation of females, the time has come for a full reset not just on the current social media landscape, but also on gender equality with Millennial and Gen Z women controlling their life-brands over the course of their careers through social media so they can become role-models to the girls and future women of Generation Brand. This will not just increase access to experienced female leaders and executives through social media, but also shape a social media landscape that promotes women, their accomplishments, and successes.
SLIDE: CONTROLLED LIFE-BRAND
A controlled life-brand will be defined by two components: our identity and our chosen purpose in life. Identity in the context of life-brand is defined as the summary of your behavior and language displayed through social media and in the real world, while a purpose can be discovered through the vehicle of a passion, an idea, your profession or expertise in a certain field, an interest or hobby you pursue. Managing the connection between identity and purpose is crucial to truly controlling a life-brand rather than being controlled by it. Our behavior and language must be in alignment with your chosen purpose and need to be portrayed with integrity. What this means, is that we will start living our lives as our life-brand.
When life-brand is controlled over a long period of time, we will develop a life-brand voice through the reach of social media that allows us to initiate change in our communities aligned to our purpose.
Understanding and implementing the concept of life-brand and the constant risk of visibility we are faced with these days will guide girls, boys, young women, and men of Generation Brand to become mindful of their behavior and language. They will develop the awareness that every picture and video featuring them has the potential to permanently damage their life-brand due to misalignment with their purpose and identity.
Living life as our life-brand, will also remove deeply ingrained biases and instead, equip our future females of Generation Brand with the belief in their own and other women’s abilities to lead. This mindset shift is driven by Millennial and Gen Z professional women shaping the social media landscape as life-brand role-models transforming Generation Brand’s thought patterns about what they can achieve in life.
Life-brand will be a confidence-builder for all future women of Generation Brand no matter their upbringing or environment. We may not be able to change any of these things. But no matter what the circumstances are a girl is growing up in, she will likely have social media access which gives her the power to control her life-brand, and with that, her future.
It might not be obvious, but this change starts with you. Every single one of you. Wouldn’t you feel you did your part if you prevented a picture, a video, or a social media post from destroying a young person’s life? Imagine you didn’t bother to take life-brand to the girl who babysits your kids, your niece or cousin, your girlfriend, or your student and one of them end ruining their life-brand and future career. If all of us educate just one girl and young woman on how to build strong confidence and self-esteem through their life-brand, they will be able to become anybody they aspire to be despite their differences in upbringing, education, or background.
That’s how we will close the gender gap.
More about TEDxWaterStreet
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This talk was given at a TEDxWaterStreet event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
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