228 — Gender Bias in Sharenting: Both Men and Women Mention Sons More Often Than Daughters on Social Media

This research looks at social media posts made by parents on VK, the Russian analog of Facebook. The VK API allows download of large numbers of public posts, and the researchers used this to download over 630 thousand posts by parents in Saint Petersburg.

They found that both fathers and mothers posted more often about sons than daughters, even though fathers posted less frequently than mothers in general. They also discovered that men tend to “like” posts made by men and women tend to “like” posts written by women: Even when controlling for these tendencies, “son” posts were more popular than “daughter” posts.

The authors explain that even though this bias is less nefarious or dangerous than other gender biases like sex-selective abortions or differences in opportunities provided to children, it is an interesting and very distinct indication that gender bias extends into “sharenting” (the practice of sharing parenting moments on social media), at least in the recorded population.

I’m interested to see if this research could be conducted on other social media platforms or in different regions of the world, including traditionally more or less patriarchal areas: Is this a global phenomenon, or something more nuanced.