Does gender matter? should it?
In the blogging world whenever the topic of gender comes up I don’t get involved. I ignore it because I’ve never felt that. In fact quite the opposite, I’ve always felt welcomed, mentored & supported by everyone (no matter their gender). That being said I think that a community manager requires a much broader range of skills.
I first had a conversation on this topic with Stormy Peters. She was preparing for a presentation on the topic. Since then I’ve been thinking of the reasons why women excel in this capacity. The recent study found that 55% were women.
Here are my ideas. Women are:
- focused on relationships
- taught to be nurturing
- multitaskers
- detail oriented
- experts at compromising & mediation
- traditionally keeping the home fires burning (not sure I should go that far back!)
This isn’t to say that men aren’t good community managers. I think that anyone that’s creative & willing to experiment will do a great job in this role. My prediction is that that percentage will shift more towards 50% as the field matures. There are many men that will find the position gratifying too.
What are your thoughts? Do you think women have a different skill set & are raised with different expectations? Is that changing now as we raise our children? Are the ‘traditional’ roles becoming less defined?
I’ve worked in community management for many years with LiveWorld, and I think it’s very difficult to generalize about “gender skill sets”. After all, I work with tons of very talented female engineers and that’s a male-dominated field – and I’ve worked with male clients (and moderation managers) who have done an outstanding job responding to the needs of their community members.
Before this, I worked in radio, and in the military – with mostly men. And I was raised by a nurturing stay-at-home-dad. So individual skill sets trump assumptions about which gender is better at which task, IMHO.
I think it depends upon the community managed. Successful community managers reflect an interest, passion and ability to connect with their community members within a specific niche.
Guys like Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang are great community managers in their market. Move them to another market and they may do well initially (because they transfer the basic best practices of community management), but they may not be able to sustain the community because the market is not a match to their interests and passions.
I note how interesting it is that the “Blogs I Read” section here is male-dominated, probably reflecting the current market.
Valerie & Laura, You both bring up very valid points.
I like Laura’s commentary on the fact that it has been men that have been leading the way for the Comm Mgr role. Although I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I can think of a number of women who have been evangelizing it for years (esp in the open source space).
And Valerie, I realized that my daughter has been incredibly influenced by her dad because he was home with her a lot.
It’s great to see some new readers commenting! Thank you!
Great topic Connie!
It seems that women would be better community managers; by definition a community manager needs to encourage open communication, nurture relationships and respond to community inquiries and problems thoughtfully (and constructively).
The “traditional” role of men as leaders in business doesn’t exactly fit those criteria–my thoughts are women are just naturally better at the role!