"Interesting. I think that just being aware that our behavior is not always justified and taking on some personal responsibility can go a long way."
I Power
Scientific Research & Self-Development Activism
Why are do we have such an overwhelmingly male demographic on this forum?
I noticed that I see way more male posters than female posters (as identified by their profile), so I got curious and decided to search the forums members by male and female. The results are pretty alarming:
16,289 results under male
1,909 results under female.
That means for every 8 male members of this forum there is only one female member (its actually a little worse than that, I'm just rounding off).
My goal here is not to say "Wow women must not be interested in self-development and suck at life" or anything else along those lines. It is also not to say "Wow, we here at I Power must be a bunch of chauvinist pigs who make women feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. We should feel really terrible" (though I do wonder if Dean's goofy pick-up videos and Tania's creeper bait may be drawing a crowd that creates these undertones). Rather, I want to create a space for speculating and discussing why this is the case.
I have a few theories as to why this is. All are likely contributing factors and there are probably things we have overlooked. However, if you think anything I'm saying is totally incorrect, feel free to say so, I want this to be a discussion in which no one feels their voice is unwelcome.
1. I think many members of this forum are drawn here by youtube channels of this groups core members over in Belgium. The channels which we probably introduce the most people through are AtheneWins, OGFurious and TaniaUncensored. All of these seem to be primarily aimed at attracting male viewers.
2. All girls on the on the internet are guys in real ife (G.I.R.L.). I jest, but there may be something to this. I'm not sure what the general demographics are for people who often use internet forums but I would not be surprised to hear that they were mostly male.
3. Much of the actual content of this website seems to address men (just look around with an eye out for it, you will start to see what I mean). I think this stems from a sort of cycle in which most people on the forum are men, most people on most forums we have prior experience with are men, we live in a society that often assumes that when we talk about someone we are talking about a man and thus we talk as if we are all men and make women feel uncomfortable here.
I'm sure these are not the only factors but this is what comes to mind as the likely reasons.
So I'd like to ask you all: Should we be doing something to attract a more balanced gender demographic and make women feel more welcome on this forum and if so what.
Also, for any women responding to this I have some questions for you.
1. How did you get introduced to IPower?
2. Do you ever feel out of place here?
3. Do you think IPower could provide content that was somehow more appealing to women?
Tags: Demographics, Gender, IPower, Women
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on -
Another good post, Bryan. You're on a roll today. :-)
Yep, the majority of members are & were attracted to the site by the Crew's YouTube channels, {including myself,}; and as you pointed out, 2 of those have historically been somewhat chauvinistic in nature, although I think that AtheneWins has improved a little bit in this regard lately. However, I am now more interested in something else that you asked/proposed, and that is whether or not internet forums in general are dominated by male participation. I had never considered this before, but I have an unfounded suspicion that there may be some truth to this; and if it is true, I can't immediately offer any good explanation as to Why. Anybody out there know how we could get some statistics on this and verify or disprove it?
Oh! and we could definitely benefit by having more female members here. How to attract them, though, is another good question. Perhaps we could convince Reese to place a picture of me in the site's banner and put my raw sex appeal to good use? hahahaha
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on -
Maybe you should create a youtube channel called "ShiznitUncensored"?
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Permalink Reply by Kokomo on -
The reason I believe there are no women on this forum is because there is nothing here of value for them. Like women already network through facebook. All their social needs are fulfilled by society because they draw happiness from external environment, they don't need to seek fulfillment from within (Self development). Now if they do find fulfillment from within then that is double awesome and win, for them, but they just don't need it as much as us guys. Maybe they have very big social circle in real life, and are busy with other responsibilities, so they just don't have time.
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Permalink Reply by Focking Original on -
No, I don't think that's it. Men and women are pretty much the same. When it comes down to real friends, they only end up with 1 to 3 friends.
When it comes down to interests, now that's different. This forum has lower value for women, because of the overwhelming amount of guys (guys also sometimes unintentionally post guy related interests). And like previously mentioned, this website gained a lot of popularity from the gaming community. And the video game industry focuses on males, because males are more interested in technology, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on
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I don't think its correct to say that men and women are pretty much the same. There are definitely psychological, physiological, and cultural differences. Its amazing the difference one chromosome makes.
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on
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@ Kokomo
You seem to be making the assumption that all women are extroverted and all men are introverts. That's quite frankly just incorrect (I know many women who are almost complete introverts). You also say "they don't need to seek fulfillment from within" which in my opinion is something that everyone feels the need to seek. I'm curious what source of information this is coming from.
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Permalink Reply by Kokomo on
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No I am not talking about extrovert, or introvert. I am talking about how they attain states of pleasure. I guess I shouldn't be looking at it black and white, I am sure there are some anomalies out there in the world. There are differences chemically, physically, mentally, and emotionally. These differences for example lead to pleasure from different sort of means.
Men in general draw happy state from within themselves. Like when I watch people in environment the women is usually more reactive to whats going on in her environment, while some men are just chill, because that is their internal state. If they are not confident, then it shows. Women confidence will varies depending on her environment and they are more likely to have good time in fun environments. I guess it all goes back to women just being more emotional then men...
This information is coming from www.rsdnation.com..... and personal experience
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on
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I'd recommend looking for a real psych journal to learn more about this because frankly that sight looks totally untrustworthy and I'm guessing the people writing the articles are non-academics and mostly young adult men. Learn about women either from women or from psych studies not from pick-up artists.
What your saying comes off as really sexist and does not reflect what I have experienced at all. Also, I do not think it has any bearing on whether a person can engage with self-development,
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on
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So does anyone have any ideas on how we as community might address this?
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Permalink Reply by VimanaPro on -
I want to draw your attention
This discussion touch female's interests
But I have not seen any posts ... written by a girl
Perhaps that something is wrong
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Runyan on
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I am concerned by this as well but not surprised given that there seem to be few women on this forum and even fewer seem to be active. I think this is pretty indicative of the problem.
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Permalink Reply by Zacharie on -
Ohh i think this is an average I Power user you are describing Maral!! :D Now this is one thing that could be done for the better imo, and that is promotion of contributive and creative behavior by the members. And it doesn't come by itself. Does anyone have any suggestions in how we can promote these attitudes in the community? There have to be something to contribute to and to be creative about first, what would it be? One thing is feel about IPower is that its too much consumption of content, does anyone agree of anything above?
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