I've noticed an interesting thing: at least 80 percent of 'zoo lovers' (people who comment and react to posts of zoos) is female, 20 percent male. Between the Zoochatters the rate is reverse. Why is this?
Gender rate of 'zoo lovers' and Zoochatters
- Thread starter HungarianBison
- Start date
Do you have actual data backing up either claim? Oftentimes its difficult to tell someone's gender, especially when you don't know them, and I highly doubt either number is skewed as far as you make them out to be.
I don't have any data, it's just my opinion/notice.
I thought of sex (biological) btw, not gender(social). I'm not a gender studies expert, especially not in English...
"Zoo lovers" are casual animal and nature lovers who are also not ashamed to coo over cute pics. This is similar demograpics to women exchanging recipes or tips about childen issues. It´s about small talk, socialisation, harmony.
Zoochatters are usually people who spend considerable time thinking about this topic, comparing their collections of memorabilia/species seen/knowlegdge and it´s fueled by competitive motive. Those are mostly men. Compare it to professional chefs, or collectors of items, mostly males.
In some languages, it´s super easy to tell gender of somebody just by their name or writing (woman and man uses different ending of words in Slavic languages, for example). In my experience, women dominate zoo´s FB sites by 95%.
I thought of something like that, but I didn't want to write it down...
Same on zoo ape-enthusiast sites e.g. Gorilla and Orangutan sites. 95% ladies probably. But for sites like zoo news/enthusiasts, or e.g. less 'cute' species such as hoofed animals, males predominate.
I do volunteer for a small cat shelter and am in contact with many others in the same "field" in my country. 99% are women, including shelter owners. Only men I see are directors of municipal shelters who don´t care if their job is to lead a shelter or a factory, only what matters is their salary and "power" on top of hierarchy (my own view).
If you're referring to Facebook groups vs the ZooChat forums - the answer is largely in the platform used.
Facebook is a social platform where sharing and friendships are the basis for interaction. The content is generally short-form or media sharing. Facebook forces (or tries to force) users to use their real names.
ZooChat is a forum platform where discussion is generally longer form. There isn't the social network aspect of Facebook friends and sharing - and users are quite often anonymous.
Forums have typically been dominated by male demographics and are often quite unfriendly places for some people who can find them intimidating or full of aggressive posters. It takes a lot of work and careful moderation to overcome some of these issues - something that even ZooChat doesn't always get right.
You'll find that (with some exceptions with specific sites and topics) forums in general tend to be much more male dominated than many Facebook groups.
I suspect that the demographics on Twitter are also very heavily skewed male.