Can Women Break the Glass Ceiling?: An Analysis of #MeToo Hashtagged Posts on Twitter Naeemul Hassan Manash Kumar Mandal Mansurul Bhuiyan University of Mississippi Khulna University of Engineering and IBM Research, Almaden nhassan@olemiss:edu Technology mansurul:bhuiyan@ibm:com manashmndl@gmail:com Aparna Moitra Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed University of Delhi University of Toronto aparna:moitra@gmail:com ishtiaque@cs:toronto:edu ABSTRACT social activist Tarana Burke launched a grass-root level campaign In October 2017, there happened the uprising of an unprecedented for “empowering through empathy" for the women of color within 3 online movement on social media by women across the world who their community . Milano’s call for sharing harassment experiences started publicly sharing their untold stories of being sexually ha- with #MeToo hashtag that followed her own allegation against rassed along with the hashtag #MeToo (or some variants of it). Harvey Weinstein, an American film producer, for sexually abusing 4 Those stories did not only strike the silence that had long hid the her took the original movement to a whole new level and millions perpetrators, but also allowed women to discharge some of their of women around the world started participating. Before this, a 5 bottled-up grievances, and revealed many important information few other hashtags were also used for similar purposes , including surrounding sexual harassment. In this paper, we present our anal- #MyHarveyWeinstein, #YouOkSis, #WhatWereYouWearing, and ysis of about one million such tweets collected between October #SurvivorPrivilege. However none of them could create such a 15 and October 31, 2017 that reveals some interesting patterns and massive movement on social media. attributes of the people, place, emotions, actions, and reactions After Milano’s tweet, within 24 hours, there were more than 4.5 related to the tweeted stories. Based on our analysis, we also ad- million posts on different social media with hashtag #MeToo (or 6 vance the discussion on the potential role of online social media in some variants of it) . She got more than 70 thousand replies to her 7 breaking the silence of women by factoring in the strengths and tweet on Twitter in one day. The hashtag quickly became viral limitations of these platforms. and in the next few days, there were millions of posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media where victims of sexual ACM Reference Format: harassment were sharing their experiences, revealing the name of Naeemul Hassan, Manash Kumar Mandal, Mansurul Bhuiyan, Aparna Moitra, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2019. Can Women Break the Glass Ceiling?: their harassers, accusing institutions for not being strict about An Analysis of #MeToo Hashtagged Posts on Twitter. In Proceedings of harassment, and reflecting on different laws and policies. While ACM Conference (Conference’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https: majority of the victims were women, there were also victims of //doi:org/10:1145/nnnnnnn:nnnnnnn other genders. Moreover, many other users joined this movement by posting with this hashtag to show their support to the cause. Women 1 INTRODUCTION from all over the world, women of different age groups, of different “I was 16. My middle aged male boss harassed me. I colors, and of different professions shared their experiences of being never talk about it. He wasn’t the last." harassed at their home, at their workplace, at public places, and over social media. These hashtagged posts were also shared, re- This and many such tweets started to explode the Twitter news- posted, and re-tweeted. The silence around sexual harassment was feed soon after actress Alyssa Milano encouraged spreading the broken, and the tabooed topics of “sex" and “harassment" were arXiv:1906.00896v1 [cs.SI] 3 Jun 2019 #MeToo phrase as part of an awareness campaign in order to reveal widely discussed across the world. the ubiquity of sexual harassment, tweeting: “If all the women who Millions of tweets that women shared in public revealed many have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we unknown stories of famous personalities, including politicians, might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem" on October artists, film stars, professors, and businessmen. Such stories chal- 15, 2017 2. However, the origin of #MeToo dates back to 2006 when lenged many long-held beliefs and perceptions regarding various *All the URLs in footnote taking more than a line have been shortened to save space people, places, and professions. For example, many Hollywood 2http://bit.ly/boston-globe-metoo-origin actresses, producers, writers, and directors revealed a dirty facet 8 Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or of this film industry where many women are regularly abused . classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation 3 on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. http://bit.ly/independent-metoo-why-when For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). 4http://motto.time.com/4987331/alyssa-milano-me-too-sexual-assault/ 5 Conference’17, July 2017, Washington, DC, USA http://bit.ly/metoo-other-tags 6 © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). http://bit.ly/usnews-metoo 7 ACM ISBN 978-x-xxxx-xxxx-x/YY/MM. http://fortune.com/2017/10/17/me-too-hashtag-sexual-harassment-at-work-stats/ https://doi:org/10:1145/nnnnnnn:nnnnnnn 8http://bit.ly/rollingstone-alyssa-milano Conference’17, July 2017, Washington, DC, USA Anonymous Their voice led them toward building a new initiative called Time’s home, at their workplace, and in public places by their husbands, Up that aims to combat sexual harassment in Hollywood and in boyfriends, colleagues, professors, and even by strangers. blue-collar workplaces nationwide [10]. Female veterans also joined However, most incidents of sexual harassment remain unre- #MeToo movement and revealed their struggles against sexual ha- ported [4]. Many women do not talk about the sexual harassment rassment in military service 9. Students and professors also joined that they experience [3]. In the western world, studies show that #MeToo movement, and revealed how sexual harassment take place such silence is sometimes caused by the fear of retaliation [7, 15] in an academic setting 10. Surprising and touching stories of sex- - the fear that the allegation could be trivialized and ignored, or ual harassment in K-12 schools also started to come to the light could even backfire. In some other cases, women do not report along with #MeToo (later this became a separate movement called because they cannot imagine other people helping them, which #MeTooK12 11). The prevalence and severity of sexual harassment is known as "bystander effect" [6]. Moreover, many workplaces that came to the light through those stories shook the world with harbor a “masculine culture" where harassment is seen as an act disbelief, disgust, and horror. of power, and the female workers often prefer to keep silent about This world-wide online revolution of #MeToo did not only ini- the harassment they experience in order to fit in and be "one of tiate a movement against violence, assault, and harassment, but the guys" [13]. Speaking out is even harder for women in many also raised some very important scholarly questions relevant to the places in the global south. In most places in the Indian subconti- Hypertext community and Computer Science discipline in general. nent, for example, “sex" is a tabooed topic, and talking about sexual In this paper, we ask, harassment is seen as an act of immodesty [35]. This challenge is (1) Who are sharing harassment stories on Twitter? compounded by the strong patriarchal culture [25] in India and (2) What kind of new knowledge could we gather around sexual the middle-east [43], where women often depend on men for most harassment through these tweets? things needed for their living including foods, shelter, education, transportation, and health [31]. Furthermore, feminist movements By making an attempt to answer these questions, in this paper, we there are often associated with western culture [32, 33] that many also explore the role of online social media in empowering women nations have a strong detest for due [9] to their long and painful by providing them with a platform for raising their voice. colonial past. Postcolonial scholar, Gayatri Spivak, famously asked, “Can the subaltern speak?" to emphasize on the constraints that keep 2 RELATED WORK a woman silent in such contexts [34]. For these and may other Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or reasons, most women remain silent about the sexual harassment the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange that they experience. for sexual favors [36]. This is a serious offence that causes several Feminist activists, researchers, artists, and scholars have long negative impacts on the victims’ physical, psychological, and social been trying to break this silence of women about sexual harass- health [14, 19, 29]. Unfortunately, the prevalence of sexual harass- ment. There have been many demonstrations on the street and on ment is very high across the globe [17, 36], and women are the the news, radio, and television media by the feminist activists that principle victims of sexual harassment. According to UN Women depict the severity of sexual harassment, and the gender-politics and World health Organization (WHO), 35 percent (almost one in related to it [23]. With the advancement of information and com- every three) of women worldwide have experienced either physical munication technologies, people have now many effective means of and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a communication including mobile phone and internet.