Tiaras and Tears: The problem with the Female Social Media Guru UK Award

You may have caught my previous thoughts on women being under-represented at industry events. So while it’s fantastic to see Social Glue initiate a Female Social Media Guru UK Award it caused a few rumblings and raised some questions for me…

Couldn’t we just recognise these women amongst their peers [male & female]. I think this is the heart of the problem the award is attempting to address.

Jamie has justified thus:

This is a debate we have had over the last few weeks. You are right there should be no division on gender but if you look at speaker panels there clearly is. Hopefully this combats the problem.

The “you missed off so-and-so” outcry was almost certainly due to lack of criteria [it seems to be just something to do with the internet and having a vagina being female] and probably a misconception there’s only a small number of fantastic women in Social Media.

I also found the later ranking of all nominees, with number of votes displayed, in poor taste.

I don’t want to get too down on Jamie. It was intended to address a very real issue and was well intentioned but comparing these women across their diverse areas is bit like like apples and oranges.

Here’s some of my faves and the areas where I think they are Social Media gurus. I’m pleased some of them made the list.

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